Well said, Dr_Drew!
Steve, in his original post, said he thought he saw a correlation between FE and switching to synthetic oil. I don't know as much about engine tech as some of you on this thread, but I know enough about statistics to conclude that Steve's data do not provide enough information (yet) to be "statistically significant". IOW, we can't draw a conclusion from it.
What's a good TCH owner to do? IMHO, take Dr_Drew's advice and take good care of your car. But how? Use an oil that Toyota recommends, and change your oil and filter at least as often as Toyota recommends. Doing that-at least-should provide protection that is more than adequate to assure your engine will last 100Kmi +. But if you have a technique that has worked for you over the years, it will probably work here too (unless it's REAL far from what the big T suggests...).
As to whether synthetic oil really improves mileage, we'll have to wait and see. If more of us keep good records like Steve's, in a few months we should have an answer that IS statistically significant. Any thoughts of asking Jason to help us with some tweaks to the Real Mileage Database?
And one more thing to agree with Dr_Drew about. If we keep the tone of our thoughts and remarks on the subject and not on the "personalities", all of us will get the highest level of benefit out of this forum. We don't have to be friends, but at very least, because we are all here sharing a common interest, we should give the benefit of the doubt to each other, and avoid "going personal" in public postings.
And if any of you want to insult me, get in line...it'll be a while before you work up to number one in the queue!
