Hey everybody!
I went to leave the house this morning, and when I started the car the message "service reqrd' soon" flashed in my MPG screen. The service interval is 5000. Does the reminder start this early? I have 4500 miles and have owned the car for two months. Guess they don't want you to forget. I have free oil/filter change for life as long as I do them every 5k.

 

Its normal to get a 500mi warning. As it gets closer to 5000mi the message will say service required.

 

I was just at the dealer today and I told my sales guy I had hit 3000 miles. He suggested I schedule the first oil change. I asked why, and he said "because everybody gets freaked out by the warnings." So, there you go.

 

You would think they would include oil & filter change soon with the service alert. I like to see the battery level readout and it got a little frustrating trying to keep the alert from covering it up. Included in that was my low washer fluid alert that was only a few days earlier. I mix my own with distilled water so it took a few days to get that completed.

I changed my own oil a few days later. It took me another few days of piddling to get the readout to accept the new oil change. It was me and not my car. The wife read the instructions to me slowly and then I got it to accept. Sure a nice feeling to get that alert back to sleep.

 

If you go past 5,000 miles the message becomes almost impossible to keep off the screen.

 

I changed my oil right at 5000 miles. Your right, ag4ever, the message stayed up almost all time after that. I drove about 200 miles before resetting it back to normal for the next oil change. Next time I will reset it at 5000 miles when replacing the oil. I'm glad of this feature. I for sure don't like having to watch the mileage for the 5000 miles oil change. I bet there are those that can't remember if they changed the oil at 20,000 or 25,000. It happened to me on a older car.
I took no chances and changed the oil. Later I used a oil change notebook I kept in the glove box.

 

I just went in for 15k maintenance... Turned out a bit more costly (and long!) than anticipated. Lost about 4 hours of my life and $300, because my front tires were out of alignment (well hopefully that's most of it! my previous visits were much less expensive).

But I asked the guy at the desk about the flavor of oil they'd use and he informed me it shouldn't matter if I got it changed every 3k miles. "I know it says 5k in the book but..." Somehow I still tend to believe the manufacturer who doesn't have a vested interest in me coming back twice as often, over the dealer. Especially when I read a while back something about how Toyota had actually come back _down_ from 7500 miles, because people were pushing it past 7500. So they knocked it down to 5k to be safe. Somehow I don't trust the altruism of the guy who works for the place looking to double my oil change expenditures in their shop.

 

In the old days, 1950's people usually changed oil ever 2000 miles. Oil additives improved greatly over the next 40 to 50 years. I remember owning some GM cars in the early and late 80's. Someone suggested the 5000 mile oil changes on my '94 Corolla. I did and it used 3/4 quart by the time I hit 5000 miles. This was after the car had 150,000 miles on the clock using 5000 mile oil changes. But later with the '03 Corolla and now the new '07 Corolla Hybrid I decided to stick with the recommended 5000 miles changes. These last two cars I went with full synthetic oil just to insure less wear with the 5000 mile oil changes. I read somewhere it can up the gas mileage a mpg or so and may help prevent valvetrain wear. The 5000 oil and filter change sounds good to me. These newer engines have tighter clearances and these new improves oils are just the ticket.

 

With my now defunct 1993 Vintage Camry V6XLE I alway changed the oil every 3K and rarely burned much right up to its accident caused demise.

I'm curious...does anyone know what Toyota recommends for the 4 cyl Camry? Unlike some here, I'm no engineer, but it seems to me that by design, the Hybrid ICE will have had less wear/need for lubrication per odometer mile.

If you assume that the bulk of the MPG delta between the two vehicles is attributable to the E mode or combined mode, then maybe the approximate toll on the Hybrid's oil would be proportion to the MPG Delta between the two vehicles? Perhaps the TCH ICE is effectively averaging lower RPM's due to combo power? In any event, shouldn't that all add up to less frequent need for oil changes? Maybe the combined delta in MPG should be added to the recommended mileage between changes?

 

I once met a elderly painter in Garland, Tx. He owned a mid 60's Plymouth wagon. He changed oil every 2000 miles. He said it had just under 350,000 miles on the meter and the engine ran just fine. He cranked it and drove off. I noticed he was a really slow driver.

About the hybrid:

I think the standard gas version Camry uses 5W-20 oil.

The hybrid oil recommendation is on the oil fill cap. It shows 5W-20 but the manual also shows you can use 0W-20 that seems to work really well in hybrids. Reason being the thin high film strength oil can get up in the valvetrain quicker with the engine kicking on and off so much. The engine starting and stopping may cause more wear than a standard running engine. I went with the 0w-20 full synthetic oil from my dealer.

For instance i'm a easy driver always trying for top gas mileage over the many cars I have owned. The '03 Corolla I had used a 4-cyl engine. It took 8500 miles for the engine to break in. I saw a nice jump in gas mileage when it occurred. I had a '06 Ford Five Hundred V6 and it took 6500 miles to for it to break in.

I looked at the list of the tanks of gas in the hybrid mileage database. The car icons at the top of the page. Many TCH's show to be broke in by their first oil change or 5000 miles. Thats when I went to the 0w oil and seemed to have picked up some mpg.

The 5000 mile oil change should be find using these new oils, dino or synthetic. There are some good synthetic blends available but i'm not sure if Toyota recommends them.