I just passed 10K miles and expected the message center on my dashboard to indicate that it’s oil change time.
When it didn’t come up, I went to the message center SETUP for the status. It said I there was 42% more mileage before I needed an oil/filter change.
I went to the user manual that i got with the car and on page 325 it did say that the oil filter should be changed at 10K or one year.
So, why the 42% left? Well, if you go to page 328, it says that the oil light comes on at 28,751 miles. Therefore it has ~ 42% left.
I called the Ford dealer service with this question. And, of course they said it 10K miles and bring it in.
This is synthetic oil and I’m not familiar with the its efficiency. Logically, I think that 28,751 miles is not right.
You can contact Ford’s customer service to inquire about that crazy entry on page 328, and listen to them try to wriggle out of it. But in the meantime, protect your engine and get an oil change ASAP.
There is no way I’d go beyond 10,000 miles between oil changes. In my car I won;t even go past 5,000 miles. Oil is cheap. Engines are expensive. And oil is the liefblood of your engine. It prevents fast-moving critical crankshaft surfaces from rubbing on their respective surfaces, it prevents piston rings from destroying cylinder walls, it removes particulates from the cylinder walls and engine parts and carrys them to the filter for entrapment, and it even removes heat from the engine’s cylinders.
I tip my hat to you for using common sense in this. Keep up the good work.
With that said the Oil life monitoring system IS NOT AN OIL SENSOR ! It is actually a complex mathematical algorithm that takes into effect, temp (both air and motor), RPM, start stop cycles, etc to figure out how much oil life is being used. Basically you will use less oil life on the highway then in stop go traffic, or local driving… HOWEVER it makes two assumptions, 1- that it gets rest when you get an oil change, and 2- that you are using factory correct oil. Bottom line is, in my opinion its not very accurate. As mountanbike said oil is cheap, engines are expensive… Get the oil changed and do your poor motor a favor.
I agree with the others. According to the OLM in my 2010 Cobalt, it can go ~9k between changes. I change the oil and filter every 5k regardless (every 6 months).
Very important note, the OLM does not monitor oil level, the oil level still has to checked on a regular basis. Unlike yourself, there are people that never read the Owner’s manual, never open the hood, and are upset when the engine fails.