I change mine at 50% which is 4-5000 miles tops. I would never buy a used car if I knew the oil had been changed at 10K intervals, regardless of what the labs say. Can’t see spending $30+K on a car and fudging on a $20 oil change. Plus its a good time to have a look at everything.
Modern cars and oils are far different than the cars and oils of today.
Oils and cars are both far better than the oils and cars that were around when much shorter changes were recommended. The same questions have been coming up for many years.
Over the years what people are comfortable has been increasing. Over the same time the manufacturers have been telling us we can extend the changes up to what is recommended by the manufacturer.
If you chose to change oil and filters more often, fine. It should cause no problems, if you choose to use the recommended change schedule, then fine, that should also be OK.
Believe it or not new oil can actually cause more wear than an oil that has a few thousand miles on it. (However the amount of wear takes some very sensitive tools to measure it and few people would consider it material.)
The only time you likely need to worry is if you choose not to meet or exceed the maintenance recommended in the owner's manual.Can’t see spending $30+K on a car and fudging on a $20 oil change. Plus its a good time to have a look at everything.
In fairness, we’re talking about an under $20k car here. Depending on model, possibly a sub $15k car.
I Use 5w30 Mobil-1 Extended Performance, Too.
I Use It Because I think It Handles Our Weather Extremes (Temperatures Vary 130+ Degrees) Better. I Change At 5,000 Mile Intervals. I Don’t Want To Break That Habit.
My oil still looks fairly new when I change it, but I will say that what the oil looks like is not a good indication of the job it’s doing. Oil doesn’t “eyeball” very well.
CSA
Back in the old days, we expected detergent oil to turn dark within the first couple hundred miles. That proved the oil was doing its job. Back then, we greaased the chassis every 1000 miles and changed the oil every 2000 miles. Obviously, engines run much cleaner now and the oils are certainly better. Even though I hate to admit it, many things have improved from the good old days.
If the oil still looks good at 10,000 miles is it not still good?!!
And the reason for engines being run out of oil, oil consumption problems, engine sludge problems, failed turbochargers, and prematurely worn out engines would be…?
One has to be pretty astute to eyeall motor oil and determine if it’s good or not. That’s a trick I’ve never mastered; especially with diesels.
Diesel turns black right away
I have to believe a gas motor with clean looking oil is in fact clean and still doing its job
The only way to tell is to have a used oil analysis performed.
I hear ya but im still betting that clean looking oil is good oil. i dont believe it could break down and not become discolored
Clean oil may be good…but darker oil may also…Oil will turn darker long before the oil is bad and performing as it should.
Anyone remember the Arco Graphite oil???
as is the case with Diesel engines
My eyes are no longer good enough to see if the oil is still good visually. I used to be able to see the long chain polymers in the visciosity modifiers to see that they hadn’t suffered shear damage, and I used to be able to see the oil molecules to see same, but I no longer can.
I’m kidding folks, I’m kidding. You cannot tell visually if oil is still good. All you can tell is if it’s contaminated by combustion byproducts that include carbon or by something else. New engines don’t put out near the carbon levels that our old '60s engines did, so a clean appearance means virtually nothing.
I would think oil contaminated with raw fuel will look just fine.
Same for water, until it takes on a milky appearance.
Oil that’s gone acidic, depleted additives too.
Metal particles will gave a sheen and gritty feel, but not so dark. Look at oil that’s been in a manual transmission for a long time.
Oil blackens from soot that blows by the rings or washes off the cylinder walls.
Modern, clean running gas engines have less of that.
Run an engine on hydrogen and the oil may never turn black: no carbon in the fuel.
consider using synthetic oil like mobil-1. it easily lasts 10kmi and 1 yr. the price will be made up for in time and has been proven to hold up for that length of time and mileage.
As I’m reading this thread, I just can’t help but remember all the posts that I have read about reading the owners manual. Now I’m not quoting exactly, but most of them state that the car was designed by engineers, who know far better then we what it takes to properly maintain the car, & that information is in the owners manual, more specifically the maintaince schedule.
Now I have to ask why all of a sudden does everyone want to disregard that information just because they don’t agree with it.
“Now I have to ask why all of a sudden does everyone want to disregard that information just because they don’t agree with it.”
Not everyone wants to disregard the owner’s manual. I called for paying close attention to the owner’s manual’s recommendations, and based my answer on the information provided there. To summarize my advice:
If you use the oil recommended by Honda, go with Honda’s recommendations for when to change the oil. If you use cheaper oil that meets Honda’s MINIMUM standards, you may want to shorten the oil change interval.
Now I have to ask why all of a sudden does everyone want to disregard that information just because they don’t agree with it.
It’s a good question…
When people here say…check the owners manual…they are usually telling someone who wants to ignore the owners manual and thus run the risk of doing harm to the vehicle. In this case…by recommending sooner oil changes…it’s NOT going the harm the engine…In fact it may be a LOT better for the engine.
I’m NOT a chemist or mechanical engineer and have never designed an engine…However I have rebuilt a few and have seen what damage can be done to an engine that is neglected. Oil is cheap (VERY CHEAP) compared to a new engine.
Less then 50% of all new car buyers don’t keep their new car past 100k miles…and less then 10% keep them past 150k miles. Doing the 10k oil change with GOOD oil and filter will probably keep those vehicles running fine for 150k miles…It’s after 150k that I’m worried about. I keep mine usually DOUBLE that…So I want my engine to last as long as possible. And like most people I believe that everyone should do as I do…I’ve kept several vehicles past the 300k mile mark and the engines were running great and not burning any oil.
As Mountainbike has pointed out on many occasions…Do you want to see how many miles you can get out of the oil…or how many miles you can get out of the engine…(I’m paraphrasing).
I understand what you are saying, but I say follow the recommended maint.schedule it has been determined by experts. My last car which I just got rid of was a1999 ML320,recommended oil change 7,500 miles. I changed the oil no sooner than 7,000 or later than 8,000 it had 260,400 miles when I got rid of it. Engine & tranny in great shape. Like most MB it did burn about 1 quart every 2,000 miles or so started around the 100,000 mile mark, & never got any worse. I would still have it but gas mileage became an issue when I started to travel 100 miles a day for work, plus the fact I was getting kind of tired of it. New car says change oil every 5,000 miles so thats what I will do, I expect to get another 250,000 miles or so from this car. I am a firm beleiver in maintaince, & follow the schedule in the manual for everything, & my cars last.
I have a couple spare minutes so here is my story- I bought a new 2004 Trailblazer in Dec 03. Ever since, I only change oil when the monitor signals it’s time to do so. The truck now has ~160k miles on it. I might have done 8 oil changes in that time- that’s about 1/year. Mileage is accumulated about 70% highway, 30% city/town.
The oil looks worse than I would normally think it should when ready to be changed but still decent viscosity and no visible issues.
The engine has a hydraulic exhaust cam actuator. Once, the ECM set a code for the actuator and an oil change resolved the issue. I did not reset the monitor until it flagged the change and that happened shortly afterward so it was close.
I have a modified endoscope that I can use as a very comprehensive boroscope. I modified it to accept a variety of light sources so I can view things in the dark like they are in bright daylight or things that may fluoresce in UV or NIR light as a couple examples. Using a 300W Xenon CW arc lamp I can view the insides of the engine as if it were out in the bright sunlight and get perfect color rendering (the purpose of an endoscope). The fiber optic cable can be snaked into the drain plug hole, spark plug hole or the oil fill (although manuevering around the splash shield can be tricky on some). I mention this so you know what capability I have to verify what I’m about to say-
The engine shows no adverse effect of the extra long intervals. There is a light varnish coating on everything as you would expect but absolutely no accumulation of any sludge or other detrimental breakdown of the lubricant.
Not all engines are created equal. If I had a turbocharger, you can bet your bottom dollar I’d be changing the oil more frequently if the OLM did not trigger it earlier on its own algorithm. The fact this engine relies on the oil to move the exhaust cam had me a bit more concerned than a more “stone-age” design but that has been shown to be no problem in my particular case. YMMV.