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Are modern engines and synthetic oils really good enough for a service interval of 2yrs or 30k miles?
Would i gain anything with an intermediate oil and filter swap?
Dunno but my Berlingo received fully synthetic oil on its last service 😯 - its clearly living a lifestyle its not accustomed to 😉
I change mine every 8000 miles (it's meant to be 12000) There is no way I would leave it 30,000, probably do it yearly or every 10,000, it will only be £35 for the oil and filter and about half an hours work.
Mine is set at 20k miles or 2 years - whichever comes first. It doesn't complain.
Perhaps the 10k mile / 1 year thing is a hangover of petrol car thinking - diesels are revving about half as high so for every mile maybe the oily bits are only working half as hard.
Mine is meant to be every 18K miles - I change every 12-15K.
Which is every 6 months. Worth it especially on higher mileage engines.
Perhaps the 10k mile / 1 year thing is a hangover of petrol car thinking - diesels are revving about half as high so for every mile maybe the oily bits are only working half as hard.
Tell that to your turbo, that is mainly why mine gets regular oil changes
Yearly for me thats under 6k but it's just easy to remember that way.
well, i work in powertrain for a major oem. my viano wants oil every 14.5k,
it gets oil 3 times more regularly than that. the question is, if you can, why wouldn't you change the oil more often.
Personally I would trust the manufacturers recommendations. If they say the oil is good for 30k or 2 years then why change sooner?
Just make sure the oil level is checked between services.
My issue is my van has worked fine over 125,000 miles at main dealer servicing with 30k service intervals as they ensure they use the correct oil,
I've now been told it's out of warranty so to take it to a normal garage, it'll be getting 20k intervals now.
It's very difficult to know the correct oil has been used in the engine, there are so many variations these days, it's pretty staggering.
I would change it at 1 year or 10000 at the very minimum. My own cars got 1 year 9k service intervals, I change mine at 4.5k, I don't want a dead turbo.
Only costs less than £40 with oil filter and 5L 10/40 fully synthetic and takes 30 mins, so why not do it regularly? Every 6K for me or 6 months.
It's very difficult to know the correct oil has been used in the engine,
Buy the oil yourself and ask them to use it.
I'm that pernickety with a 1.6HDi Partner - nearly the right oil is the wrong oil. That said in the early days with those engines the main dealers weren't any better.
Only costs less than £40 with oil filter and 5L 10/40 fully synthetic and takes 30 mins, so why not do it regularly? Every 6K for me or 6 months.
That seems like overkill to me.
I struggle to believe that there's no advantage to more regular oil changes than recommended (2 years 20K recommended for my 1.3L Fiat Multijet).
I do the oil/filter every 6 months (~7K). It's cheap and doesn't take me too long, although I invariably spill some on the road because I'm clumsy. Engine always sounds better for it.
I'm not convinced by long service intervals.
It's attractive for those leasing a car a the start of its life.
My car is recommended 18k. It'll be done yearly/10k.
Oil is cheaper than a new engine.
As an engineer (specifically electronics but also a more general background), funnily enough I tend to be inclined to trust the manufacturer's design/engineering based recommendation rather than some random homespun theory punted around for the last gawd-knows how many year ago, from when design/materials engineering may have been less advanced and engines were petrol.
(That said, there's an argument for ignoring similar running -in recommendations wrt piston ring sealing re bike engines. Anyhow..)
And of course, sometimes they screw up (I know 3 owners of Alphas circa 15yrs ago that all had cambelt failures)
As far as 'ooh, high mileage', consider : it's driving behaviour which has more effect. An engine spinning happily on the motorway will be up to temp, generally with minimal loading, lubrication sloshing around nicely. A low-mileage engine may simply have far more stop-start cycles per unit mileage -wear occurs when starting up since there's no significant oil film between the initially stationary parts (bearing shells etc) as they start to move.
Oh, and diesel fuel has some lubricating properties (tho reduced with low sulphur, hence additives used, if I understand correctly).
Fwiw, there's (or used to be) a lot of nonsense around re motorcycle engines - most modern engines (last 20yrs) should do a pile of mileage, but resale values used to drop significantly for anything with 'high' mileage. ISTR one 96-ish Fireblade that'd got to 200+k miles, probably 170 more than most ever saw.)
But as mentioned in a previous thread, by way of anecdote: we passed on our 2002 1.9tdi A4 in 2015, 220-odd k miles. Oil needed topping up in the first 120k when it was my OH's company car, other than that no engine work other than cambelts and 2yr/20kmile longlife servicing.
As ever, YMMV, yer pays yer money etc but I'm not sure spreading overly pessimistic paranoia does anyone any good unless it has good basis in facts.
The manufacturer is only interested in making sure the car lasts long enough to fulfill its warranty commitments. Gone are the days where the car can sail over 100k with ease. Cars are designed to run with minimal coolant and oil so they are lighter so they can fudge their emissions etc. More and more stress is put on the turbos timing chains oil control rings etc. Lease cars with 20k service intervals are passed on to the public after 3 yrs so any problems are passed on down the line. Incidentally my evil polluting Yeti gets an oil change every 10k as per its dealer schedule because it's a lease. If I'd bought it outright it would be on variable servicing. Read into that what you will!
As an engineer (specifically electronics but also a more general background), funnily enough I tend to be inclined to trust the manufacturer's design/engineering based recommendationSo , as an engineer, would you be inclined to trust BMW when they tell you their auto boxes are sealed or life, or ZF when they tell you the box should get an oil change after 50k?
Gone are the days where the car can sail over 100k with ease.
Really?
My focus is on 145000 miles. I've got a friend who's got an M3 well over 100k and two 2.5l turbocharged Fords on a combined 320k miles. None of them have had anything particularly special done to them,, certainly not on the engines. Have a look on autotrader and there are loads of cars on 100, 150, even 200+k miles.
I thought it was more the other way round, 20-30 years ago a 100k car was at the end of its life. Now it might be only half way through it.
As an engineer (since we are throwing that around) I'd suggest that knowing how many engineering figures are just spurious figures from who ever built it's head..
Remember all a car has to do is last the terms of its warrenty.
I change/service at about 2/3rds of the manufactures recommendation vehicle always sounds better after.
I'm talking about modern engines post 2010 etc. I think the golden era for engines was the 90's- 00's. I had Audis Saabs Toyotas and hondas with well over 150k on them. No problems at all. Now all I hear is oil control problems. Engines drinking oil etc. Emission standards are stressing engines to the point of failure once they get a few years old.
I've a Fiesta 1.4 tdci 2012 model, 115,000 miles never used a drop of oil between services.
Don't see any reason to replace as there is nothing wrong with it.
Serviced on the dot 12,500 mile intervals. I did have the timing belt done early though.....
Annualy here, c 10k km pa.
When i worked for an oil co the guys at the lube plant used to change their oil in their lunch break, apparently monthly....they used to get 100s k miles out their cars. Quality mgr used to always say change as frequently as you can, but that was 20 years ago.
But how do you know that every 10,000 miles is right, or every 5,000 or 2,000? All sounds like a lot of guesswork to me.
There's lots of patents filed by car manufacturers for measuring oil quality as it is used. There is a certain amount of science behind it... e.g. from 20 years ago
https://www.google.ch/patents/US6223589
Gone are the days where the car can sail over 100k with ease.
I don't buy them til they've done more than double that and don't sell them til they've done more than triple.
Depends on the number of cold starts. Once warm n running efficiently the oil will not degrade as fast as multiple cold journeys
Why skimp on oil changes?
Every 10k I'd say. I got 225,000 from a fiesta 1.4 tdci. Engine was still running well enough when chopped it in
I'm talking about modern engines post 2010 etc. I think the golden era for engines was the 90's- 00's. I had Audis Saabs Toyotas and hondas with well over 150k on them. No problems at all. Now all I hear is oil control problems. Engines drinking oil etc. Emission standards are stressing engines to the point of failure once they get a few years old.
How do you explain Euro 6 truck engines with a design service life (not service interval) of 1.6 million km? Euro 6 emissions are largely achieved by after treatment - the engines aren't massively different.
Working in automotive r&d, I'm happy to run the recommended service interval - on my van based MPV that is every 2 years / 20,000 miles. It has a bigger sump (compared to the same engine in cars on 12k interval), the specified OE synthetic oil and OE filters, runs around lightly loaded, mostly long runs in a UK climate (so not super hot, super cold, dusty etc). Why put in the most expensive synthetic oil and then change it massively early? Fair enough in the days of cheap and basic mineral oils.
I've got four laser particle analysers on the hydraulic ring mains at work (4000 psi and 20,000 litres of oil which never gets totally changed - just monitored, filtered and topped up) - shame we can't have the same things in cars 🙂
I've always used millers oils and in my current vehicle, 2013 VW Caddy 1.6tdi with 113,000 miles which i bought at 110,000 miles with 5 service stamps so 5 oil changes, I've recently changed the oil & filter with millers oil nanodrive and i'll prob change it every 12,000 or so miles.
If you want to get geeky about your oil then [url= http://www.millersoils.co.uk/automotive/millercare.asp ]you could always get it analysed to check on the oil condition, along with engine condition[/url] - not that expensive when you consider the price of some modern oils.
[quote=Inbred456 ]I'm talking about modern engines post 2010 etc.
Mine's a little older than that, but I'm fairly sure they still sell the engine I have in mine. Bought with 125k on the clock.
My Uncle ran a Toyota as a taxi.
It had something like 300,000 miles on the clock.
I asked him how often the oil was changed, expecting something like every 6,000 miles.
'Oh, I had it changed at 150,000 miles', he said!!!
I just leave it until i smash the sump on a speedbump.... damn you edinburgh council.
Whilst replacing said sump i noticed a complete lack of crud and engine internals in fine fettle.
I've no idea how often i should but I tell you what a golf tdi has the best oild filter arrangement I've ever seen!
One factor that hasn't been mentioned yet is that during an active DPF regen small amounts of diesel find their way into the oil. Many cars can monitor this dilution (maybe by just counting the number of regens or more cleverly actually testing the oil) and tell you when the oil needs to be changed. Ignore this warning at your peril. Or more specifically the engines peril!
My cars engine takes 8.5 litres of fully synthetic oil. I tend to wait for the car to tell me it needs doing.
It does seem to be based on more than just time/mileage though - the countdown isn't linear on the computer.
My Abarth 500 service interval is strictly 6000 miles for an oil and filter change 18000 for everything else.
Gone are the days where the car can sail over 100k with ease.
Well thats a load of crap.
It's fine to go for the long service plan your car will take no harm. But if you want to change it more often producing more oil wastage then go ahead.
It's fine to go for the long service plan your car will take no harm. But if you want to change it more often producing more oil wastage then go ahead.
is being an expert to speak with authority on this part of the nhs training ?
It may be true but your statement reads of it being fact followed by trying to shame those that take good care of their equipment.
Very good a new low.
the thing about all of this is you can change the oil as uch as you like but it all depends on the quality of the oil as to the benefit. i.e. use a very expensive long life service synthetic oil with OEM filters and you can have repetitively long service intervals on a low stressed (i.e. not many cold starts, long motorway journeys etc) engine. However swap that for a cheap (labled as synthetic, many are not) oil and try the same and you will run into problems. Theres been a lot of people doing this with the "modern" vw engines and having them fail sooner than expected.
With good oil, I'd change it when the car tells me - it's never got near the quoted long service intervals yet, it's been 8-10k miles.
Short journeys, driving hard (and heat from turbo and to a lesser extent the rest of the engine degrading the oil) etc.
On previous cars I've ended up halving service intervals as at the recommended oil change interval the performance noticeably improved afterwards.
