Myths About Motor Oil And Your Car

haribofangtastic

Anyone got any thoughts on this interesting article about the myths of motor oil. It says it isn’t always necessary to change your oil every 3,000 miles like some garages may tell you.

Is that accurate?

http://www.uccc.co.uk/blog/Myths-About-Motor-Oil-And-Your-Car

InsideInsurance

Who on earth ever thought it was necessary to change it every 3,000 miles? That would have been almost twice a month with the mileage my father used to do.

The article seems accurate, with the possible exception that it claims other garages claim that you need to change it every 3,000 miles

Car_Complaints

its normally personal preference, changing the oil every 3000 miles is a bit extreme with todays engines but to be honest I would still personally change every 6000/6mths especially diesels

I know someone (driving Instructor) who religiously changed his oil every 3000 miles on a Citreon AX, he got 370,000 miles out of it, I very much doubt he would get that with changing every 12000 miles.

tykesi

I change mine roughly every six months which at the moment is around 4 thousand. Because I'm doing low mileage and want the car to last I feel it's worth the £30 or £40 in between services to do this.

I used to run Land Rover diesels which benefit massively from oil changes every 3k miles.

InsideInsurance

tykesi wrote: »

I used to run Land Rover diesels which benefit massively from oil changes every 3k miles.

Looks like I will stand correct but how?

I had a 2.0T petrol doing 10k a year with no changed between services for many years, a 1.1 petrol before that for 8 years with no issues with a less than annual change.

Father on the other hand was a 2.5L diesel doing 75k a year plus with only 6 monthly changes and car was still fine when traded in at 9 years old

Joe_Horner

There was a very in-depth study a few years ago (which I can't find a link to but will keep looking) where they ran a car with oil samples fully analysed for metal debris, viscosity, etc every 500 miles or so over something like 50k miles.

One of the interesting things was that there was a spike in the metal content arou nd 1k miles after every single oil change - suggesting that changing oil too frequently can actually be bad for an engine. The optimal change, for that engine under the conditons they were testing it, seemed to be between 6k and 12k with very little practical difference in wear (measured by metal loading of the oil) between those points.

Istr they were covering about 15k a year, so "annual or 12k" was their final verdict.

Iceweasel

There are of course 'hard' miles and 'easy' miles.

Long motorway trips every day means a high annual mileage, but they are mush easier on the engine than a life of short commutes / school runs, when the engine never really reaches full operating temperature, and condensates build up in the oil without a chance of evaporating off.

A 12,000 mile or one year, whichever comes first is not necessarily ideal for either situation.

BMW and others moved towards a more specific servicing approach with their CBS - Condition Based Service - where the computer in the car requests service depending on the use the vehicle gets, as well as time intervals.

There is a 'count-down' indicator telling the driver how far until the next oil & filter change, independently of air, and pollen /cabin filters. Annual inspections and brake-fluid changes are also determined by the computer.

As a confirmation that motorway miles are easy miles I have done a return trip to Greece of 7,000 miles and the count-down to the next oil & filter change only reduced by 4,000 miles.

This type of use results in my oil changes being about 16 to 17,000 miles apart.

Our other car by contrast does very short journeys, and is serviced annually - last year that was just 5,700 miles.

For oil changes there cannot be a 'one size fits all' approach.

Stoke

Iceweasel wrote: »

There are of course 'hard' miles and 'easy' miles.

Long motorway trips every day means a high annual mileage, but they are mush easier on the engine than a life of short commutes / school runs, when the engine never really reaches full operating temperature, and condensates build up in the oil without a chance of evaporating off.

A 12,000 mile or one year, whichever comes first is not necessarily ideal for either situation.

BMW and others moved towards a more specific servicing approach with their CBS - Condition Based Service - where the computer in the car requests service depending on the use the vehicle gets, as well as time intervals.

There is a 'count-down' indicator telling the driver how far until the next oil & filter change, independently of air, and pollen /cabin filters. Annual inspections and brake-fluid changes are also determined by the computer.

As a confirmation that motorway miles are easy miles I have done a return trip to Greece of 7,000 miles and the count-down to the next oil & filter change only reduced by 4,000 miles.

This type of use results in my oil changes being about 16 to 17,000 miles apart.

Our other car by contrast does very short journeys, and is serviced annually - last year that was just 5,700 miles.

For oil changes there cannot be a 'one size fits all' approach.

This was my understanding as well. Cars driven short distances with lower mileage may need their oil changed more regularly in terms of simple mileage than cars driven long distances.

I change mine between 9k - 12k roughly, depending on the weather and the day I plan lol

Don't forget, there's no substitute for good quality oil as well. Nowadays, you should all be using synthetic, even if your handbook says semi synthetic. Find out the modern synthetic alternative and start using it.

TrickyWicky

I'd disagree with the 3000 miles thing to be honest. That said, if you want to look after your car and ensure it'll run forever you could change the oil every 1000 miles if you wanted.

Most folks do it every 6 - 12k miles. I've heard of some volvo owners not doing it for more than that. One bloke on aother forum said he'd not changed his for FIVE YEARS.

I'd say a lot depends on the engine. If you have something like a volvo or toyota (you know, the solid industrial type engines built for punishment) then you can get away with longer service intervals but if you were using a weaker run-around engine from a manufacturer who puts profit over quality then you obviously need to take more care of it.

Just like the oil going dark myth on that site.. engine oil goes dark very quickly after you've just put in fresh oil. I've noticed it go dark within 10 minutes in some cars so if you obeyed that myth you'd have to pull over every 10 mins to change your oil.. oh and have an oil tanker follow you everywhere lol.

Stoke

TrickyWicky wrote: »

I'd disagree with the 3000 miles thing to be honest. That said, if you want to look after your car and ensure it'll run forever you could change the oil every 1000 miles if you wanted.

Most folks do it every 6 - 12k miles. I've heard of some volvo owners not doing it for more than that. One bloke on aother forum said he'd not changed his for FIVE YEARS.

I'd say a lot depends on the engine. If you have something like a volvo or toyota (you know, the solid industrial type engines built for punishment) then you can get away with longer service intervals but if you were using a weaker run-around engine from a manufacturer who puts profit over quality then you obviously need to take more care of it.

Just like the oil going dark myth on that site.. engine oil goes dark very quickly after you've just put in fresh oil. I've noticed it go dark within 10 minutes in some cars so if you obeyed that myth you'd have to pull over every 10 mins to change your oil.. oh and have an oil tanker follow you everywhere lol.

Also depends on if you have a turbo. You should be far more strict with your service schedule on a turbo car than a non-turbo car.

A._Badger

Stoke wrote: »

T
Don't forget, there's no substitute for good quality oil as well. Nowadays, you should all be using synthetic, even if your handbook says semi synthetic. Find out the modern synthetic alternative and start using it.

All fine until the last sentence, which is wrong. Switching to a fully synthetic oil in an older engine can cause problems with seals.

Using a good quality semi-synthetic oil where it is recommended by the manufacturer and changed in accordance with recommended service intervals is more sensible than just making assumptions about synthetics being better in all circumstances.