General consensus on long interval oil changes.

General consensus on long interval oil changes.

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Discussion

g3org3y

20,606 posts

190 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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Oil changed every year or every 10k miles, which ever comes first.

I only use 10w/40 semi-synth (so nothing too fancy/expensive) and you wait for offers (Halfords, ECP, online etc) it's cheap enough that a yearly oil change is not an issue if you do the work yourself.

Patrick Bateman

12,143 posts

173 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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bakerstreet said:
Fair point, but your engine could still fail if there isn't any oil in it.
No st. biggrin

B'stard Child

28,320 posts

245 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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Patrick Bateman said:
Megaflow said:
In one of those examples you have quoted is technically nothing to do with either manufacturer, the gearbox is the Jaguar and Mercedes is built by ZF, so they will be going by what ZF say.

Which brings us onto 'sealed for life', which does not mean sealed for life, what it actually means is sealed for design life. They will have designed the gearbox to last for and/or X years, Y thousand miles , Z hours. After that is it beyond it's life.

Honda for example design to, or used to 10 years ago, a 10 years and/or 150k miles life. After that you are own your own because the manufacturer will have never tested beyond that.
I doubt that's strictly true. Ask BMW about their automatics then ask ZF and you'll get two different answers.
^ exactly

BMW say the automatic gearbox on my E38 4.4 V8 is sealed for life - however it is fitted with both drain and fill plugs.

BMW's "Life" means 100,000 miles and the manufacturers ZF agree that a change at 100,000 miles or earlier is a good thing if you plan on running the car for a long period past 100,000 miles.

As far as engine oil changes go the subject has been discussed many times and in my case none of my cars do large miles per year but for each I have a specific reason for ignoring manufacturers service interval and doing what I've always done

SLK - lots of short trips commuting and town work 3-5K oil services using branded but not long life oil

BMW - only long trips but this can often involve towing 2T so annual change normally 3K miles using branded but not long life oil

Track car - after every 2nd track day does no road mies (old design engine so best quality 15/60 mineral oil used.)

Lotus - varied use and it's turbo charged so 3K miles which normally means an annual change (old design engine so best quality 15/60 mineral oil used.)

I don't mind that I am probably changing too frequently because oil is the only thing that keeps moving parts apart and it's way way cheaper than the expense of sourcing and replacing an engine.

Megaflow

9,345 posts

224 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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Heaveho said:
Megaflow said:
That's five examples where the manufacturers possibly got it wrong, now lets consider all the other parts on those cars they calculated right, and all the other cars on the road that don't have issues.

In one of those examples you have quoted is technically nothing to do with either manufacturer, the gearbox is the Jaguar and Mercedes is built by ZF, so they will be going by what ZF say.

Which brings us onto 'sealed for life', which does not mean sealed for life, what it actually means is sealed for design life. They will have designed the gearbox to last for and/or X years, Y thousand miles , Z hours. After that is it beyond it's life.

Honda for example design to, or used to 10 years ago, a 10 years and/or 150k miles life. After that you are own your own because the manufacturer will have never tested beyond that.
The above 5 examples were being used to make the point to a previous poster that blindly accepting manufacturers claims isn't always going to result in trouble free motoring......nothing you've said changes the fact that has shown to be accurate.
That is very true. But, whilst cars have improved massively in reliability, they are by far and away the most complex product on sale to the general public and as such things go wrong. I'd suggest the best way of getting as close to possible to trouble free motoring is sticking as closely as practically possible to the manufacturers service schedule.

Mave said:
Megaflow said:
That's five examples where the manufacturers possibly got it wrong, now lets consider all the other parts on those cars they calculated right, and all the other cars on the road that don't have issues.
But after they obviously got it wrong, did the manufacturer a) fix the problem or b) ignore the problem? So it's not 5 individual technical problems, it's 5 manufacturers having a policy to leave customers exposed to a known issue rather than ammend service schedules.
The manufacturer will have amended the service schedule and the revised service schedule will be in all of the dealer workshops. The practicalities mean reprinting revised services books and sending them to the owners of all of the car in question is just not going to happen.

Mave said:
Megaflow said:
Honda for example design to, or used to 10 years ago, a 10 years and/or 150k miles life. After that you are own your own because the manufacturer will have never tested beyond that.
So the bloke on the internet who is maintaining cars older than 10 years may in fact have more experience than the manufacturer!
Quite probably, but if the car made it through the first 9 years and 364 days by sticking to the service schedule, what changed on the very next day?

currybum said:
MG CHRIS said:
Thank you normally some people will pick a fault in what I say and twist it to suit there agenda.
Oh go on then…
As some background I have previously led the sign off of a service interval specifications on a mass produced engine, so I have some knowledge of the process that goes in to making sure that an engine is always running on the correct amount and quality of oil.
MG CHRIS said:
Being a mechanic ive seen the problems of long life servicing and lack of oil changes it can do a lot of damage to the engine, various manufactures have problems with oil problems.
There looks to be some confusion in this thread about what causes those problems, on one side you have the risk of not having enough oil in the engine to lubricate it effectively, and this is the biggest issue that needs to be considered when specifying a service schedule.

There are two ways to approach it, the way many of the German manufactures approach this is to add oil level sensor warning lights, give the customer a bottle of oil and expect them to top it up when the car askes for it.

The other way is to design the engine and oil volume in such a way that is first of all doesn’t burn oil too fast and that there is plenty of oil in the engine so that is will easily make it between services even with the worst case driver….This is the approach I prefer as I would not be happy trusting the health of my engine to the customers’ ability and willingness to top it up.

The other factor that needs to be considered is the oil performance over time, the first thing to mention is that manufactures spend a lot of time developing oils for their engines and the engineering and testing that goes in to them is staggering. The upshot is that they maintain their performance orders of magnitude longer that their jiffylube predecessors. We wouldn’t specify 18k mile service interval unless we were very sure that the oil will be performing in even the worst case situation,

I have seen oil that is 50-60k old that is still working as it should. So there is a big level of safety in the calculations and algorithms that work out the variable intervals.
MG CHRIS said:
The most famous one is the corsa timing chain rattle caused by lack of fresh oil this week infact ive seen a corsa in with low compression due to only having 1 oil change in 4 years the oil was like tar.
Lack of oil kills engines, that is very true, but how do you know that the chain rattle was due to lack of fresh oil?

Without knowing the oil level history, and having the oil tested you cannot jump to that conclusion it may have been filled with the cheap oil of the wrong spec.

Either way that example has little to do with extended service intivals.
MG CHRIS said:
Mini also have the same problems with the chain tensioner too, also the mazda 6 diesel engine but that to do with failed regens on the dpf dumping fuel into the oil.
These again are design issues with the engine, not linked we long service intervals, replacing oil more often is not likely to have any impact on those failure modes.
MG CHRIS said:
Another case is the utterly woeful 1.6 hdi pug lump found in various cars. They suffer a lot of problems that would have been cured by more regular oil changes. On this engine the injector seats are known to chuff if this goes un checked unburnt carbon enters the oil. Oil thickens up over time and blocks the small gaze in the turbo oil feed line this results in the turbo running dry of oil that interns destroys the turbo and if carried on driving will kill the engine.
This also can happen without the chuffing injector seat oil gets thicker over time and does the same thing also it isn't helped by short journeys.
You really have a hatred of that engine despite it being the most popular diesel engine on the road today. Your analysis may or may not be true ( I suspect it’s not) but do you know think this failure mode will have been looked at, tested to death, discussed at length…tested again and then containment actions put in place to address.

I suspect many of the issues you see at the lower value end of the market are due to people not servicing the cars correctly rather than an issue with the manufactures standards.


MG CHRIS said:
20K service intervals are only set for the rep market they will last 3 years then as soon as they are sold on the manufacture doesn't want to know about them. Outside of the typical rep car service intervals on more run of the mill cars are around the 10,000 mile mark.
That is utter nonsense, if you really believe that manufactures only care about the first customer and the first 3 years you are seriously mistaken.

MG CHRIS said:
Most mechanics I know don't believe in long life car servicing as we see what or can become of cars that are on it. Know I will admit that some cars will be fine on it and we only see cars that comes in with faults which is fair enough but a lot of the problems come down to lack of servicing or even a basic oil change.

I assume mechanics will not like only seeing a car every 20kmiles rather than every 10k miles.

I’ll say it again, the issues you are seeing are bottom end of the market are likely to be due to improper servicing rather than the manufactures specified schedules.
MG CHRIS said:
A oil and filter change on my car cost £20 for me with my mx5 mk1 it gets changed ever 6000 miles or once a year as I don't do high mileage the engine will last well over 250,000 miles.
In fact most engines will do this sort of mileage with regular oil changes, the oil is the most critical part of your engine why wouldn't you want to make sure its a fresh as it should be, ive seen the condition of oil coming out of longlife serviced cars all I would say is I wouldn't want that lubricating my engine.
Oil is critical to the engine you are completely right on that one, but changing oil is not a completely risk free process for the engine, regardless of how experienced the mechanic is there is always the risk of over/underfilling, not closing the engine up correctly, contamination in the engine or just using the wrong spec of oil, on top of that you have the cost and the environmental impact of throwing away good oil without reason.

The key think is to service the engine to the specifications is was designed to changing the oil twice as often is just a waste.
Curry, I fear we may be wasting our breath with industry experience. It appears a load of blokes on the internet know better than many thousands of engine hours on a test bed...

MikeyLCR

501 posts

180 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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I Always have oil and filters done every 6 months or 5k whichever is first (usually the six months. Also tend to give it a couple of minutes at tickover before shutting off.

rigga

8,727 posts

200 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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skyrover said:
Indeed... manufacturers are in the business of selling car's

Longer service intervals look more attractive, regardless of what it is doing to the engine over time.

The car just has to last past it's warranty
In a nutshell this ...
Especially in Mini's case here in the uk where the common engine issues are discounted as "rumours on the internet "and no assistance is offered when thing's inevitably go wrong, live in the state's and mini America will cover issues after the warranty has expired, but its took some class action law suits to force their hand's, the joint venture of the N14 prince engine between Citroen Peugeot and mini haw not ben a great success.
And as an aside, mini did revise their long life service schedule's eventually as 2 year's or 20k wasn't working.

andyalan10

402 posts

136 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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MikeyLCR said:
I Always have oil and filters done every 6 months or 5k whichever is first (usually the six months. Also tend to give it a couple of minutes at tickover before shutting off.
But why 6 months and 5,000 miles, why not 3 months and 2,500 miles?

I seem to remember that was the standard oil change interval in the late 60s and early 70s.

If you've been doing 6 monthly/5,000 miles for any length of time then you have decided to go from twice as often as recommended to 4 times as often, why the change?

Andy

Willy Nilly

12,511 posts

166 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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A 20,000 mile oil change interval on a car that spends its life on a motorway is only about 400 engine hours

Robert Elise

956 posts

144 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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currybum said:
I know, I see it as a few minutes of light entertainment.

The general ratio of people who know what they are talking about : people who think they know what they are talking about on PH is a little depressing.
Don't despair. Many reasonable people are reading.

WinstonWolf

72,857 posts

238 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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My E39 has just done 30,000 miles without an oil change, I meant to do it but just kept forgetting paperbag

Did two filter changes in quick succession and it seems none the worse for it. Still doesn't use any oil, no nasty noises and no metallic particles in the old oil.

I know you should do it more often, but I'm running it into the ground and would just buy something else if it broke.

The current oil looks and feels lovely

B'stard Child

28,320 posts

245 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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currybum said:
Megaflow said:
Curry, I fear we may be wasting our breath with industry experience. It appears a load of blokes on the internet know better than many thousands of engine hours on a test bed...
I know, I see it as a few minutes of light entertainment.

The general ratio of people who know what they are talking about : people who think they know what they are talking about on PH is a little depressing.
Engine test beds aren't real life - of course this thread is light entertainment - like most threads on PH.

some like me ignore the manufacturers schedules and change oil more frequently because

- they are aware that the usage of the car doesn't conform to the norm

- because they don't use long life oils

Using long life oils - Mercedes say service interval for my SLK 230 is 10,000 miles or 2 years whichever comes first

I do 3,000 miles a year so I'd be changing the oil every two years and after 6,000 miles using long life oil

Car takes a little over 6 L on a full change.

Opie Oils £28.98 for the oil

I pay £13.05 for 6L of branded semi synth

So slightly cheaper oil servicing costs balanced off by the fact that I throw an extra oil filter into the mix every year.


Others follow manufacturers recomendations to the letter regardless of their car usage type - they are probably right too biggrin

Heaveho

5,278 posts

173 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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currybum said:
Thats why I prefer to design low oil consumption and sufficient oil volumes in to an engine from the start, so that even the worst case customer doesn't need to top it up between services. I would rather not rely on the customer to do this critical maintenance for you.
Clearly not employed by BMW, Audi, VW or Porsche then, their products seem incapable of reaching the next service without unscheduled attention as far as the oil level is concerned, often as frequently as every 1k miles! I'd love to hear a coherent argument for deliberately building that scenario into a modern engine.

lowdrag

12,868 posts

212 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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Until last year I'd had two Mercedes in 20years,running up 250,000 each. Oil changes every 12,000 and gearboxes every 60,000. Never a problem at all. The "new" CDi 200 will get the same treatment and is already one month past this new computer generated service interval since no way am I having it serviced before the 12,000 are up.

Qwert1e

545 posts

117 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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I have an elephant scarer in my garden. I know it works, because I've never seen an elephant here.

I also change the oil in my car every 5,000 miles or 6 months even though the manufacturer says it can go 2 years or 20,000 miles.

No. No really. I don't.

Mave

8,208 posts

214 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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Megaflow said:
Mave said:
Megaflow said:
That's five examples where the manufacturers possibly got it wrong, now lets consider all the other parts on those cars they calculated right, and all the other cars on the road that don't have issues.
But after they obviously got it wrong, did the manufacturer a) fix the problem or b) ignore the problem? So it's not 5 individual technical problems, it's 5 manufacturers having a policy to leave customers exposed to a known issue rather than ammend service schedules.
The manufacturer will have amended the service schedule and the revised service schedule will be in all of the dealer workshops. The practicalities mean reprinting revised services books and sending them to the owners of all of the car in question is just not going to happen.
But they didn't.
The Alfa cambelt issue was a problem with the 155, 145, and 146. It was known before the 156 was introduced, but the 156 and 147 still had the same 72k mile schedule, at the dealers and in the service book! I personally know 2 people who suffered failures before 50k miles.

The VAG 1.8T issue is well known, there are numerous examples of people ruining engines which have been serviced in line with the manufacturer schedule, by the dealer.

This isn't about the manufacturers managing the problem at the dealers without communicating to the customers, this is the manufacturer refusing to accept there is a problem.

Robert Elise

956 posts

144 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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Qwert1e said:
I have an elephant scarer in my garden. I know it works, because I've never seen an elephant here.

I also change the oil in my car every 5,000 miles or 6 months even though the manufacturer says it can go 2 years or 20,000 miles.

No. No really. I don't.
but when the elephants do arrive have you seen the damage they cause?

Mave

8,208 posts

214 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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Megaflow said:
Mave said:
Megaflow said:
Honda for example design to, or used to 10 years ago, a 10 years and/or 150k miles life. After that you are own your own because the manufacturer will have never tested beyond that.
So the bloke on the internet who is maintaining cars older than 10 years may in fact have more experience than the manufacturer!
Quite probably, but if the car made it through the first 9 years and 364 days by sticking to the service schedule, what changed on the very next day?
Clearly that depends on the test, the pass / fail criteria, and by how much margin it passed.

If it passed the test with no deterioration, then probably nothing will happen in the next day.
If it marginally passed the test at limits of oil strainer blockage (for example) then sticking religiously to the service schedule beyond the manufacturer experience may allow the engine to deteriorate to failure.
If you want to keep your car beyond 9 years and 364 days, surely it's wise to slow down the deterioration of the engine with regard to known problems through preventative maintenance?

Mave

8,208 posts

214 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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currybum said:
Robert Elise said:
CURRYBUM - great post.

(unfortunately?) we live in a world of reliable cars where few people check the oil between services. I wonder how many engine problems that do occur do so because of low oil levels at some time in the car's history?
In other words, if a car is serviced every 25k but never has low oil would it most likely run fine beyond 250k? And when engines do fail have they had some mistreatment in the past? (low oil, WOT on start-up etc)
If an engine is serviced correctly and never allowed to run low on oil, putting aside special causes there is no reason why the mechanical of engine shouldn't keep running well beyond the 250k.

Its when the service schedule is not followed, the oil is run down or the wrong oil is used when you can start to get issues.
So why do VAG engines, serviced to the manufacturer schedule, with the correct oil maintained at the right level, have a history of failing catastrophically at 100k miles or thereabout?

TheEnd

15,370 posts

187 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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Mave said:
So why do VAG engines, serviced to the manufacturer schedule, with the correct oil maintained at the right level, have a history of failing catastrophically at 100k miles or thereabout?
Is it really that common? This is quite a large motoring site and I've certainly heard of things like N75 valves needing to be replaced, and coil packs going, but I haven't heard about this engine apocalypse you are talking about.



DKS

1,669 posts

183 months

Monday 21st July 2014
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I decided on 3-4k oil changed because that was when the oil started to turn black. I do fear the day I buy a diesel, of course.
Plus, well, it's quite satisfying isn't it? Also a good chance to have a quick look underneath and behind the wheels whilst you're under it and stuff.