VIN123, I see that your post was April 1, was that perhaps an April Fool joke?
@EllyEllis No, I never did change the oil in that mower.
Not changing the oil in a lawn mower is NOT what I’d consider a wise financial decision. Most mowers only need to be changed once a year. Changing the oil once a year will cost you about $60 over a 20 year period. A new mower will cost a lot more then that when the engine is destroyed. I have one mower over 25 years old and still runs fine. The one I use the most is a huge 36" walk behind with a 14hp Kawasaki engine. It’s currently 15 years old and still going strong. I plan on keeping this mower for another 20 years.
You hit the nail on the head.
I spend a great deal of my time performing risk analysis with respect to maintenance practices.
A company owning a fleet of vehicles has to analyse the savings from lengthening the oil change interval against the breakdowns and shortened life of the engines.
If you own 500 taxis you can afford the odd engine failure if the oil drain period produces significant savings. If you only own one vehicle, your safety margin needs to be a lot larger. So, a taxi or limo fleet owner may go to 15,000 miles and experience one yearly premature engine failure @ $6500 or so. If they observed the Severe drain interval posted in most manuals, they would be changing at 5000 miles.
For 500 taxis doing 100,000 miles per year, the short interval would mean 500x20= 1000 oil changes @ $25 amounting to $250,000. The 15,000 miles interval would mean about 3333 oil changes @ $25=$83,325. There is also the òut of service cost to consider, both for service and repair time.
The savings would be $250,000-$83,325=$166,675 per year. That’s why fleet owners take the manufacturer’s “Severe” rating for taxi service with a grain if salt.
If they went to 25,000 miles, the engines might all wear out much quicker and there might be more failures. That would quickly eat up the savings and also add to the downtime due to all those repairs. Most fleet owners are not accountants or engineers, but it does not take rocket scienc to figure out where the best point lies, keeping in mind that the vehicles also have to meet emission tests in most states.
At the same time they do oil analysis to determine how much EXCESSIVE WEAR these longer intervals result in. If the longer interval results in minimal extra wear they go with it. The idea is to make the taxi last a million miles without too many major replacements, such as engine or transmission.
Since I only own two cars, that rationale will not hold up for me, and I will be more conservative.
This process will likely confuse the OP since it demands a disciplined and analytical aproach to decision making.
Hmmm. He hit another nerve. Don’t fall for the garbage that government fleet managers don’t continuously do cost/benefit analysis on the fleets. There are many aspects to it though such as many cars being under warranty. At least in Minnesota, the resale value is as important as other aspects and are auctioned at about 70K not 400,000. Also all of the cars have oil monitoring systems anyway. I’ve known these fleet managers and they are hired from private industry with fleet experience. Just drives me nuts to hear people think that its so easy to come up with cost savings so easily. What do you think people have been doing for the last 30-40 years?
At the end of the day, different strokes for different folks… MOST of us on this board run our cars into the ground, so we take care of them so that they last as long as possible. It just makes no sence to me to be that cheap… Lets do Math becasue thats what the OP wants, and forget fleets lets use regular Joe…
Avg price of an Non-synthetic oil change is what about $25?? Lets say $30… just to be safe
Lets assume a cradle to grave ownership of 200,000 miles… Lets assume 15,000 avg miles per year and 13 years of ownership.
Change interval # of oil changes cost of oil changes
5000 miles 40 $1200
7500 mlies 27 $800
10,000 Miles 20 $600
SO the MOST you can hope to save over 13 years is $1200… Thats less then $100 A YEAR…Its not even one cent per mile… So my question is, if a motor is going to cost at minimum $4000 for a short block… Is not $1200 over 13 years worth protecting your investment… You are talking about such a miniscule amount of money over the long haul it makes no sence…
MY MOTHER ALWAYS SAID “CHEAP IS EXPENCIVE”, meaning saving a little today to take a short cut is going to cost you $$$ in the future to set it right. I try to live by those words.
Longer change intervals may save money short term, but long term the cost of rebuilding engines, spending time/money pulling the oil pan off to clean it and the clogged oil pump pick up screen will actually add more to the final cost of operation. I had to remove the oil pan from my '88 Escort last spring because of sludge build up in the oil pump screen because the oil pressure gauge was showing near 0 PSI. The car is relatively easy to pull the oil pan on, yet it took all day to pull it clean the pan/screen and reassemble everything. Most garages charge $75-125 per hour for labor. 8 hours x $75. per hour =$600., 8 hour x $125. per hour = $1000., + 8 hours lost production time would pay for a lot of oil changes. The labor costs alone would pay for 30-50 oil changes, 150-250K miles worth of oil changes at 5K mile intervals. A single engine rebuild would cost a few thousand dollars and likely have at least a week of lost production time. I’m also in it for the money, not having to buy another car every couple years!!
It’s not like it takes all day to change the oil in a car, I pull the drain plug /filter and while the oil is draining I spend time checking the level of other fluids, power steering, coolant, transmission, water in the battery, brake fluid and take a look at the condition of belts and hoses. By the time I’ve finished caring for my vehicle properly the oil is through draining. I put the oil plug back in spin on a filter refill with 4 quarts of new oil and am usually finished within 30 minutes without getting in a rush. If I wanted to simply drain the oil and change the filter I could easy do it in 10-15 minutes.
Discarding oil isn’t a problem any more, nearly all auto parts stores will take used oil to be cleaned and recycled so there’s really no impact on the environment other than the energy it takes to recycle it. The gas we’re burning in our cars have a larger impact on the environment than used oil, but I see you’re still driving and polluting the air. I think you said in a previous post you were getting 19 MPG in your vehicle, I’m getting 40+ MPG, who’s having a bigger impact on the environment and oil usage. In 518K miles even considering the shorter intervals I used to change my oil I’ve probably used less than 200 gallons of oil in 24 years and at 40 MPG 12965 gallons of gas. Your vehicle with no oil changes 0 gallons of oil, but if it ran 518,600 miles which I’m certain it won’t you’d use about 27295 gallons of gas. Who’s doing their vehicle and the environment the most good? Last time I checked gas was still made from crude oil.
As far as your question about the government fleet. Most likely they are going to retire the cars at xxxxx number of miles worn out or not. If they were keeping them until they were worn out, I’d still agree, oil changes are cheap insurance because the cars would have to be replaced more often without them increasing taxes. New vehicles every few years cost the tax payer a lot more than oil changes would. Oil is much cheaper than parts/cars/labor. I seriously doubt there are many cars in the federal government fleet with 200K miles or older than 10 years old. Even most state, county and city governments don’t drive vehicles until they are worn out. It’s either x number of years or miles before replacement.
I used to work for a construction company owned by J.A. Jones, that at the time was one of the 5 largest in the world and they didn’t skimp when it came to maintaining their vehicles/equipment whether it was oil changes or other replacement parts, they knew without those trucks, backhoes, graders, bulldozers, etc, jobs could be shut down or thrown behind schedule. Many years before this I worked for two companies that molded polyurethane and fiberglass car bumpers and grills, they ran their machines 24 hours a day 7 days a week nearly all of the 5 1/2 years I worked for them and the only time they were shut down was for mold changes or when the machine would no longer function… No preventive maintenance. If memory serves me correct the first of those two companies that I worked for lasted about 5 years from the time they opened until they closed. The second one I think lasted less than 5 years, I’m not sure because I quit and moved away. Both went belly up, rather than shut a machine down and repair a chemical or hydraulic leak they’d let the machine leak gallons and gallons of hydraulic fluid and run low on hydraulic fluid then in the end have the machine shut down for hours/days replacing a hydraulic pump or cylinder (K’s of dollars in parts plus lost production) that had been damaged by neglect not to mention the safety issue of having oil all over the floor where people were having to work. The chemical leaks were even worse. The chemicals cost about $1. a pound, again they would rather let them leak than shut down long enough to stop the leak and on top of that were cancer causing chemicals. I’ve worked in both types of situations good PM and no PM, one was a world leader in it’s field the others were failures in theirs.
@the same mountainbike and @hobietcat Here is a link to a somewhat informative study.
http://www.zddplus.com/TechBrief15%20-%20Extended%20Oil%20Change%20Intervals.pdf
Hobiecat let us remind all where you started, “- I will never change my oil (No, not the filter either) again, just add when needed, and not suffer any oil related issues”
Recap for us how your vehicles performed under this practice.
“Who here read beyond the 1st paragraph of the most recent posting by the OP?”
Not me!
When someone starts off with a severely flawed hypothesis, and then persists (in a highly verbose manner) in defending that flawed hypothesis–despite all evidence against it–I don’t bother spending/wasting much time on their continued defense of that theory.
If OP’s car is an oil burner and uses 1 quart per 1500 miles, and the crankcase holds 5 quarts, he will be changing oil every 7500 miles. If he adds a quart every 1000 miles he will be changing oil every 5000 miles. Just like the guy with the Franz toilet roll filter. That would still leave him with a plugged oil filter and the oil would simply bypass the filter.
In a dust free environment the car might just make it to 100,000 miles without seizing up, if it is an old style V8 with large clearances. The valve gear will no doubt be coated with crud.
Note all the IFFs! I would still call OP a distorter of the truth, if not a complete re-inventor. Just like many politicians.
Please let OP tell us how many quarts of oil he used to top up the crnkcase.
@Docnick, I think that when an engine burns oil past the rings a lot of the bigger “dirt” particles stay behind, so the oil gets more and more contaminated in spite of the make up oil.
Come to think of it a lot of the crud left on the cylinder wall from the burned oil gets washed back down into the remaining oil.
I can’t believe this thread is still going!!
What does oil break down into that isn’t slippery? You’re driving on it. Asphalt.
Docnick
I am trying to figure out the nature of your response to me!
I am not saying that we should bar the OP from continuing to post his fevered defenses of his flawed hypothesis. I am just saying that I don’t intend to continue to provide an audience for those ongoing, overly-long posts of his.
Let him continue to post–as long as the moderators allow. Just don’t assume that I will be one of the readers of his dissertations.
Thanks for the response.
I was trying to visualize a situation where OP might get to drive 100,000 miles without the engine seizing up. I was not suggesting that either of us continue this hypothetical “never change oil” strategy.
As of now I’ll consider OP educated enough to know what causes oil to deteriorate and engies to wear out.
Doc, I’m surprised at you!
Adding a quart every 1500 miles to the glop in the system is no where near the same as draining the glop every 5,000 miles and refilling with fresh oil. And then there’s the problem of the filter.
Glop accumulates!
The OP actually confounds me. He/she is articulate and well able to describe and communicate his/her thoughts. This suggests an organized mind. Yet I don’t see any sign that he/she has learned from the process of this thread.
One major issue with the approach of poster is majority of owners simply do not check their oil level. PM oil changes allow it get to proper level again before the danger zone.
I agree it’s not the same, but a tight engine using no oil will likely seize up at 60,000 miles or so. I was giving OP the benefit of the doubt, but agree it is questionable if the car will make it to 100,000 without any filter or draning.
On the other hand, if the car leaks oil badly and you just keep topping it up the oil will be a good deal fresher, since the glop will likely be in suspension and leak out as well.