Are extended oil changes a bad idea?

[Kevin Criswell]

I have noticed over the last few years the push for going 10,000 or even 25,000 miles between oil changes. Today listening to Ron Ananian he commented that going 25,000 miles between oil changes is one of the single worst things you could do to a vehicle. He mentioned that not only the vast majority of oil filters out there can not handle that long of a change interval, but that is also 25,000 miles between someone looking the vehicle over.

Personally I go 7,000 miles using synthetic oil and filters. With the price oil quality oil and filter being cheap I see no need in running the risk of damaging a engine trying to skimp on $50. I agree that 3,000 mile changes are overkill, but trusting a oil filter to work beyond 10,000 miles?, not on any engine I own.

So, what say you?

Topic

[Bill]

It seems the car manufacturers are all trying to outdo each other by extending service intervals. I guess they don’t like seeing their cars run 500.000 miles. Obviously they don’t want them to last that long. I had a 2012 Impala at work today that had never had an oil change In 50.000Km. It came from a well known car rental business. The engine was done. It sounded like 6 Briggs and Stratton’s all running at the same time. I changed the oil and filter and it actually got louder.. :huh:

Anyway.. then there is the growing problem of waste oil and filter disposal. We heat our building with waste oil in the winter months but It’s really getting hard to dispose of the old filters.

Hell, When I was young my DaD used to get his cars oil changed every 1000 miles. Myself, I just can’t seem to break the 7000 Km barrier with my own synthetic oil changes. It would just bother me.

[Grayfox]

my car gets serviced very 6 months.

[Nick]

I started stretching out my 6000 miles, with the oil looking decent after 6000 miles on synthetics. the haynes manual says 10000 miles or 1 year and default oil service reset on the dash go for 1 year or 15000KM which works out a little less than 10000 miles. I’ve been doing it at 7000-8500 depending on the time of year, how dirty the oil is and what kind of driving has been done most.

I reset the oil service indicator to nag me at 1 year or 8500 ish miles when I do it.

[William]

I will change my oil every 3,000 miles regardless of conventional, syn blend, or full syn. Because 3,000 is an interval that has been tested time and time again by the everyday consumer and daily driver.

Did the oil companies road test millions of cars to go 7,000 miles on one synthetic oil change? I really doubt it. It was probably simulated in a lab somewhere, and not stop and go all day long off pump gas like the rest of the world. So if conditions are perfect and regulated, sure, I believe you can go much farther between oil changes.

By the way, does anyone know how they test the 7,000 mile oil change?

[Rudy Wilmoth]

🙂 Newer vehicles are getting longer oil change intervals, and to try this on a older car without having the oil tested is asking for trouble. There are a lot of variables that enter into a oil change time frame, your environment, hot or cold, the age of the car or truck, your driving distance, and the length of time the engine stays running all of these determine a timeframe for an oil change.
I have two vehicles, a 12 Toyota truck with a 5K, 6 month oil change interval and a 04 Mazda Miata, that is my weekend car. I have my Miata on a yearly oil change level now, as I drive it very little. I used a Bosch long distance oil filter that is good for 10K before changing and I use Synthetic oil. Now the truck has had a oil test done on every oil change and the intervals will be lengthen from the 5K to maybe 6k, and it will be tested again for advice.
No one rule will cover every person’s vehicle, you must use some common sense and get some scientific back up if you plan to stray from what your vehicle’s owner manual says when to change your oil. An oil test can be done for 20 dollars and it will tell you everything about your engine and may help find early problems.

[dan]

here is my personal imput on this.

many auto makers and oil companies are saying beacuse of the way new oil is formulated that its ok to go for extended oil change intervals exceeding 7,000 miles, do i think this is a good idea NO!!!! the life of your oil depends on several factors, how long you drive, how you drive, what oil you are using, the weather…

if you have a cheep walmart oil with a FRAM filter (god forbid never use fram, yuck…) and you drive short distances that never allow the engine too warm up properly with lots of stop and go traffic with freezing temps and high humidity your oil life will be very shortened beacuse of the run rich, blowbuy and high condensation, in this instance i HIGHLY recommend you at least use the rule of thumb change interval 3,000 miles or 6 months if 3,000 miles are not reached buy that time

now if you drive very long distances at a very steady speed with your engine running cozy and happily at operationg temperature for quite some time especially on warm dry times of the year, and you are using a high quality synthetic like Royal Purple or Mobile One extended performance or whatever… then i could easily see 4,000 maybe 5,000 miles… but 7,500-10,000 miles are you on drugs!?!? seriously…

REGARDLESS my oil gets changed at no later than 4,000 Miles at the latest i usually change it at roughly 3,000 miles and i use at least Valvioline or Mobile 1 with a wix filter, I like royal purple with K&N filters most…

[William]

[quote=”slotcar” post=79671]No one rule will cover every person’s vehicle.[/quote]

Precisely.

[i]Is the synthetic stuff really as good as they say?
Will I get better gas mileage with synthetic?
Can I really drive up to 10,000 miles between oil changes?[/i]

I tell all my customers that their engines are fine with conventional every 3,000 miles. I wouldn’t use synthetic unless the manufacturer recommends it. Correct viscosity and oil changes will keep an engine happy.

Even though I’m supposed to sell, sell, sell… :whistle:

[Kevin Criswell]

[quote=”Shiryou” post=79643]I will change my oil every 3,000 miles regardless of conventional, syn blend, or full syn. Because 3,000 is an interval that has been tested time and time again by the everyday consumer and daily driver.

Did the oil companies road test millions of cars to go 7,000 miles on one synthetic oil change? I really doubt it. It was probably simulated in a lab somewhere, and not stop and go all day long off pump gas like the rest of the world. So if conditions are perfect and regulated, sure, I believe you can go much farther between oil changes.

By the way, does anyone know how they test the 7,000 mile oil change?[/quote]

Usually some test engines and test vehicles they run OAs on.

I lean toward 3,000 is still a little to soon with the much better advances in oil technology. Remember the 3,000 mile rule was created back over 30 years ago when oil was pretty bad and often contaminated even when new. My OAs show 3,000 would be overkill, about time I hit 5,000 miles the oil is ready for a change. When I switched to synthetic my OAs at 5,000 were almost perfect so I switched to 7,000 with a synthetic filter to match. I don’t like the idea of going over 7,000 because I do not believe the filters can adequately handle that much wear and tear.

Anyone that is more interested on this stuff should check out Bob is the oil guy’s website. That place is packed full of information about oil and oil change intervals. I used to think GM’s reminder software was allowing the vehicles to go to long between oil changes, but the OAs posted there tended to show I was wrong and Chevy was pretty accurate of when to change the oil.

Note: The 3,000 mile interval was established in the late 1920s, so I would safely believe that the quality of oil and engines has skyrocketed in the last 80 years and the 3,000 interval is outdated. I am so tempted to send in a sample from a can of Quaker state I have that is from 1942 and see what the results are, but at the same time I don’t want to open it.

[William]

Yeah, you’re probably right. However, we won’t be able to tell 100% until there’s a global movement for people to change every 5-7K, because the industry isn’t going to get results from people stuck in the old ways, myself included, who religiously change oil every 3K.

But on the upside, it can’t hurt. There’s still less potential for wear/damage than waiting around for higher mileage.

[Paul]

I usually go 7k to 8k miles with Mobil 1, but change the filter and top-off the engine at the midpoint.

[Lorrin Barth]

I used to drive a DSM and as it accumulated miles it began to have lash adjustor noise. Now, this was a near universal problem with these cars, mine wasn’t a special case. The problem was that if the noise got too loud the knock sensor caused the ECU to pull the timing. It eventually got so bad that car would barely move from a stop and I had to replace the lash adjustors.

Anyway, before the repair I noticed that the noise would get worse when the car had about 1700 miles on an oil change. I started checking the oil and found that it would stay pretty clean for the 1700 mile interval and then as the lash adjustors started clacking the oil would turn dark. The only explanation I could think of was that the oil filter was already bypassing at 1700 miles. This on a car that got oil changes every 3K and ran good oil filters.

So, what do you think about this: could a filter be bypassing at 1700 miles and if so what does that say about extended oil change intervals?

[Author]

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