Engine oil Castrol or OEM Toyota

I do every 5000 miles because it's easy to do and cheap if you change it yourself.

i have a 2007 camry le v6. i got it a few months ago and plan to change the oil every 3000 km. i dont drive much and my mechanic (whom i worked under in an apprentice-like role for 3 months) recommended every 3k. i got the car in april and i still havent even driven 2000 kms since then (including four 200+km trips), so i still have about two more months until ill change it anyway.

Just think of it this way. At 5k miles, your oil is already dirty and full of contaminates. Why would you want to keep driving with that oil for another 5k miles? Sure, the manual will say each oil change at 10k miles is required but if I want my car to last beyond 200k miles, I would take the extra precautions and change it sooner at every 5-6k miles.

I change mine every 5,000 miles and the oil is dirt black when I drain it. I have a Rav 4 with the same AR25 engine and I want my vehicle to last as long as possible.

It’s a fact that frequent oil changes are better than not. Anyone Toyota Master (NOT tech) will tell you every 5k and for good reason. Want to go by the manual and do every 10k? Go for it, but that’s insane. If you want your car to last as long as possible, change every 5k.

I’ll be doing my first one at 1000 miles, then I’ll be doing them every 5000 miles or 6 months.

I've been using the original castrol 10-60 oil and then more recently the BMW M TwinPower 10-60 oil for the last 10 years on my e46 M3.

I was running Castrol 0w30 European formula in my 07 323i and the car ticked a lot and made noises I’ve never heard it make previously when running 5w30. So recently I swapped to castrol 5w40 European formula and the car is whisper quite even on cold starts. It just sounds so much healthier.

I'm using Castrol GTX 20W50 because it's the only 20W50 that I can easily find locally. I tried Rotella 15W40 but I found that it gave somewhat low oil pressure on my old engine.

Stay away from the stuff that the dealer puts in, the Euro Car formula(5w-30 i believe) that Castrol makes is a Blend, meaning not fully synthetic and it shears and burns really quick.