handydandy

my car has 10,500 miles on it right now. i got an oil change 2k miles ago (which was about 4 months ago), and i switched to synthetic for the first time; however, the color of the oil already looks dirty. the color of the oil is darkish brown.

is this normal? should i do a very early oil change again?

White92

I think it probably just mixed with the residue from the "regular" oil that you had in before. Either that or you went to the track and drove the holy hell out of your car! haha

handydandy

well when i first did the oil change it was clean, but only after 2k miles it changed to brown. and i dont drive hard, but i mostly do city driving.

LukeaTron

It's unavoidable and completely normal. It's impossible to completely seal the pistons so there will always be some blow by and carbon that makes it's way into the oil. The color of the oil indicates absolutely nothing as far as it's lubricating qualities are concerned.

handydandy

im asking because i never had the oil color change so soon (2k miles in). so the color of the oil has nothing to do with how worn out the oil is?

should i just stop worrying and go by the mileage before the next oil change?

TinkySD

Also, synthetics generally have much higher levels of detergents in them so it is cleaning up residule left over the previous 10k miles.

mrgold35

The dark oil color sound about normal. It is my understanding the additives in the conventional oil from the factory to assist in the car break-in period causes the dark color. I've noticed my 06 at 3,000 miles with original oil had a dark color. I've changed to Mobil 5w-30 at 5,000 miles and I now have 23,000 miles and 4 syn oil changes the oil still gets dark after about 1-2K of driving.

mg7726

you can't eyeball based on color, all oils will turn black after 2k miles. just change it again around 6-7k miles.

jlukja

yes, and yes

Chadwick

My friend has an 06 Tacoma and we both get synthetic oil changes at the same mechanic. He recently had a supercharger installed, and they had to tear apart the majority of the engine for the install as well to check to see if anything needed fixin' under warranty.

He told me the guys that did the job were rather impressed on how spotless all the engine components were from the synthetic.

I was very happy to hear this knowing how important oil changes really are.

Luded

that's good news that the oil changed color, it only means it's cleaning out the crap that it should as it lubricates the engine

SodaLuvr

Usually no. It depends on the application. The additive package for a VW 502.00 approved oil is different than one for an API SM 5w-30 application.