Stick to oil change interval on 242,000 mi car?

[Travis Bryant]

I’ve owned my 1993 Accord since it had 64K miles on it. I’m now at 242K miles and have always changed the oil at 3K miles. The owners manual says change at 7500 miles under regular circumstances and I’m wondering if I should now change to the longer recommended oil change interval . But I’m at 242,000 miles now, should I just split the difference and change oil/oil filter around 5K miles? The engineers who made the car and wrote the recommended service intervals know what they are talking about. But I just want to get some advice from people who have experience with high mileage engines and staying or not staying with the owners manual service intervals. Thanks!

Topic

[Nicholas Clark]

I think you wasted a lot of money changing out the oil every 3K for that long. I changed mine every 5K in my 05 Toyota until it hit about 175K, then every 3K afterwards. I changed it that often because as an engine wears, the gap between the cylinder walls and the pistons becomes greater, allowing more combustion gasses into the crankcase, and therefore, into the oil. Your oil is made to catch these gasses safely. But your oil can only hold so much.

Bottom line, I would say that you should leave it at 3K now that your engine has that many miles on it.

[Michael]

What information did you use to determine he wasted his money by maintaining a 3k oci? You know what kind of driving he does, the conditions he drives in, what kind of oil he uses, what filter he runs? I’d stick to the 3k interval, a $13 dino oil change isn’t much to keep clean oil in your engine. The only proper answer to determining what oci you should use, is with an oil analysis (like from Blackstone labs). Not the owners manual, or what someone on the internet says you should do. There are a lot of variables to take into account, but 3k is taking the safe course on dino oil. It’s cheap, and while changing it you looked over other things under the car and took care of them before they became bigger problems, definitely not a waste even if you didn’t get the absolute last mile out of the oil before changing it.

[jonathan]

It all depend on what driving you do, is it highway driving? Is it stop and go with lot of traffic? Does the engine warm up before you turn it off again? I would say if you do highway driving mostly, change it every 5k miles, if you do traffic driving change it every 3k miles, changing oil is a very big preventative maintenance and cheap though overlooked, you did good in changing it every 3k, explains why you have 240k+ miles and going strong

[David]

Preventive maintenance is a good thing! Given how long the car has lasted, I’d keep doing what you have been doing. Oil is cheap – you can get a decent synthetic (Castrol Syntec, Mobil 1, etc.) from Walmart for $20 or so for a 5qt container!

[Mike]

You wouldn’t want the airlines to cheap out on aircraft maintenance just because a certain plane is beyond a certain age or mileage. The same should be true of automotive maintenance.

[Wyr Twister]

Sounds like what you have been doing is working . Continue doing it . If it ain’t broke , don’t fix it .

I am old school and comfortable with 3000 mile OCI . Buy the oil / filter on sale . That way , an oil / filter change is not expensive ( if you do it your self ) .

What gets me is the person that makes a big deal of the cost of a 3000 OCI , yet pays $ 5 at Starbucks for a cup of coffee !

Wyr
God bless

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