Duc Hunter

Well all went according to plan. My 4Runner has 9000 miles on it. I bought it with 8000 from a local dealer who has "changed the oil at 5000 miles". The oil looked golden and fresh so I did not sweat it too much. That was a few weeks ago. When I changed it today I had thought to not change the filter since it was "new" at 5000 miles. Well my skid plate had obviously never been removed and the oil filter had Japanese writing on it. The new Toyota filter I bought has English which leads me to believe this is the filter that the factory put on the car. OUCH! So a word to the wise, at least check that your filter is being changed every time. In previous cars I use to put a scratch on the filter that day or two before the service with a screw driver and then check to see if the scratch was there when I picked it up.

A few times when it was not I questioned what the dealer had really done. In one case the dealer did the whole service again and asked me if I would like to watch (I did). Another dealer gave me the whole service for free. In both cases the dealers, from then on, were very nice and made sure everything was done right. Just a thought.

For the record I put a factory filter in and 6.5qts of Redline 5-30. This weekend I may swap out the diffs and transfer case to Redline as well, 75-90wt for all three.

4RunnerFever

Cool! The 3.4 uses about 5 quarts. Why redline instead of Amsoil or Mobil 1?

Welcome to the forum

Duc Hunter

I do not like Mobile 1. I believe that both Redline and Amsoil are better products. Mobile 1 trades allot on their name and their racing oils for the teams (like their F1 teams) but their consumer oil is not on par.

I run Redline over Amsoil mainly as a personal preference. I have heard nothing but nice tings about Amsoil but have just always run Redline. I really like the base the use to build their oils. Also, I have a Galant VR-4 that is pretty pumped up, the engine has been run pretty hard and it has 192,000 miles on it. The compression is still great and, when I recently swapped the stock cams out for some HKS cams the stockers looked great, almost no wear. So I guess the good experiences with Redline are why I like it too.