Importance of an oil change; Noticable difference in my Innova Crysta

I paid over Rs 12,000 to get the oil imported and feel it was worth every penny.

BHPian g_sanjib recently shared this with other enthusiasts.

I have a Jan 2017 registered Crysta 2.8 Z and bought it pre-worshipped in April'23. It belonged to a very senior Toyota official at Bidadi and was in mint condition when I got it home. It just needed basic servicing which was done after my purchase. There was absolutely no need for any AT oil change. As I kept reading about Crysta AT reviews in this forum, I went through a couple of notes from GTO and other folks who did recommend an AT Oil change every 5 years of ownership for any vehicle as nothing is necessarily "sealed for life". That prompted me to enquire at the Nandi Toyota Service Centre at Hosur Road about the AT Oil change. As expected, the service folks were not willing to change the AT Oil as it is not readily available and has to be ordered from the plant at Bidadi. They too advised the same thing, that it needs no oil change at all. However, upon my insistence, they ordered the part which arrived in a week's time (imported from Thailand to the Bidadi plant). I had to purchase a total of two cans, 4 Litres each and the final bill was for Rs. 12540/-

My experience during the oil change and the characteristics of the vehicle after the AT oil change was done.

In the attached photographs you will see that when they flushed out the old oil, around 1700 ML of oil came out and what went inside was 4 Litres of oil !! That itself convinced me that I made the right decision to replace the oil. When I asked the service folks as to why only 1700 ML of old oil came out, they mentioned that the AT gearbox gets so hot that over a period of time, oil gets evaporated !! This means the gearbox was running at almost 135% of the deficit oil needed to perform its best. But it was still running quite well and I had no issues. That's Toyota really

Now just immediately after the AT oil change, while performing the road test, I didn't feel much of a difference. However after driving it to my office and back home for almost 2 to 3 days, and around 50 kms, I realized that the gearbox and engine have become super duper smooth and there is almost NO diesel clutter or any other kind of engine noise whatsoever. It almost became as smooth as my Honda City Petrol AT and even better than my Hyundai Tucson CRDi AT

I now finally feel that the money spent was definitely worth it and YES nothing is really "sealed for life" in auto mechanics. Everything needs periodic maintenance and change. Very happy with the experience now and love the silky smooth and very limited diesel clutter noise drive to my office.

One thing to note is that: Only 4 litres of AT Oil needs to be changed, however, you will still need to buy two cans of 4 Litres each, and that is because they put additional oil inside the gearbox and again take it out for testing purposes.

Hope this was helpful, and I will be happy to answer any additional queries.

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