Does Toyota do a oil change w/ Synthetic or Dino?

As far as I've learned and have been told - Toyota uses a synthetic 0W20 oil for all oil changes throughout the life of the vehicle.

 

I hope that Toyota dealerships have more integrity that the numerous VW dealerships that routinely substituted cheap dino oil for the specified (and expensive) synthetic VW oils. That resulted in a sizable VW oil sludge epidemic.

One has to consider that even a routine used oil analysis would not detect a deference between synth 0W20 and dino 5W20.

 

As long as they get the grade right I would not care if it was synth or not. I believe Toyotas 0W20 is synth, but I think there are non-synth 0W20 (Honda's for one). There's nothing inherantly terrible about tradional motor oil, imho. I swapped from Honda's (mineral) 0W20 to Pennzoil synth, with a Civic hybrid: didn't notice anything much.

 

Sad to say, there have been numerous reports of Toyota dealerships using 5W30 dino oil in Prius oil changes. Myself included.

First visit, asked service advisor about 0W20 synthetic and was told that was all that they used in the Prius. Second visit, same service advisor, did not discuss, found 5W30 on the service report. Had to have them drain and refill with 0W20.

Moral of story, I will discuss the use of only 0W20 every time I take my car to my dealership. Especially if you have a maintenance agreement that is prepaid.

 

the first time i went to my dealer, they were going to use regular oil. i made them double check the specs and they came back and said it should be 0w20 synthetic, and the second time i was there, there was not a question about it. just be careful of your dealership and watch them do the work.

 

This morning I brought my 2009 in to the dealer for its 35K service. As usual, asked for a synthetic upgrade on the oil change, because I've noticed a ~3MPG mileage improvement with synthetic.

Curiously, this time they refused to provide the synthetic upgrade. They claimed that a synthetic upgrade could void the warranty because it's not Toyota's recommended oil.

I have no idea what to make of that claim...

Does that sound like a smoke screen to you, or do you think that what oil you use could actually have an effect upon warranty coverage?!

 

I don't think you can assume anything about what oil they are going to use. I took my Prius in for the first change (free) and I asked what they were going to use. They said and wrote down Mobil 1 0W-20. I suspect if I paid they would have used the Toy brand.

 

(Just for the record, yes, I do realize that a 3MPG mileage improvement from 47 to 50 over 5000 miles probably only barely covers the cost of the synthetic upgrade. But hey, what can I say; I'm an obsessed Prius geek!)