Cleansing Oil Change?

When it comes to engines and oil, cleaner is better, right? If so, why not perform a cleansing oil change, i.e., change the oil, drive 10 miles, and change it again. Is there a downside to this besides the time and expense of the extra oil change?

If you’re changing the oil as recommended, this extra change would have no benefit. The oil is made to suspend a reasonable amount of contaminants with no harm to the engine. If you wanted a cleaner engine, you’d be better off changing twice as often, rather than twice in a row. But no benefit either way.

Well, the extra oil-less startup after the second change surely isn’t going to help engine life.

Unless you don’t change your oil on a regular basis, [i]EVERY[/i] oil change is a “cleansing” oil change. There is no benefit to disposing of good clean oil.

Like tardis was saying, every time you change your oil your engine makes a few revolutions before the oil pump refills and builds up pressure. This causes a certain amount of wear, but if you’re doing the oil changes at regular intervals the benefit of changing the oil outweighs the harm. The miniscule benefit of removing the contaminates in the oil that have built up in the past 10 miles will be far far outweighed by the harm of the engine running without oil.

Not to mention the increased chance of stripping the plug, double-gasketing the filter, forgetting to add oil, etc and causing some real damage.

No likely harm other than the additional cost to you and waste of oil. Then again not llikely to give you any benefits either.

A waste if the vehicle has been properly cared for.