How often do you change the oil in your car. It appears that the guidelines keep changing.
I don’t have oil to change. In my last car I followed the guidelines
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My car has an oil life monitor.
I change when it gets to 15% life left.
If I remember right that is about 6-8 thousand.
I use full synthetic though.
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Every 5k with whatever oil is on sale. Usually change it myself.
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Too messy for me, and having the Valvoline shop do it doesn’t cost me that much more.
It depends on the car, type of oil, driving conditions, and type of fuel.
General rule for gas powered is 10K for FULL synthetic oil. Synthetic blend or conventional should be 5K.
Diesel will be much shorter than gas and propane will be much longer than gas.
If the car has turbo, you need to shorten the interval.
If you drive in 100+ heat, you need to shorten your interval.
If you drive it like a race car, you need to shorten your interval.
If you have a turbo, drive it like a race car in 100+ heat you should change it maybe every 3K or less
If you rarely drive, I would say every 2-3 years if using synthetic. I change the oil on my old tractor about every 5 years or so. My small diesel tractor, I change it about every 2 years. Neither one is used a ton. Normal year is about 30-40 hours a year.
If you have a nitro methane car, you should change it about every 1/4 - 1/2 mile.
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Thanks for the responses. Keep in mind I use full synthetic oil.
As a frame of reference my 2010 BMW only has 51,000 miles and my 2012 Acura has only 31,000 miles. BMW recommends 15,000 miles or one year whichever comes sooner. So I change it every 11 months.
My Acura recommends six months or 6,000 miles whichever comes sooner. So I change it every 8 months since it hardly driven after six months.
NOt that long ago it seemed that a lot of BMW owners who leased didn’t bother to change the oil at all. I believe that BMW offered free oil and filter changes to get them to have it done.
I doubt that made much difference. People that lease Beemers consider their time extremely valuable.
My vehicle is a 2008. I put Walmart brand high mileage full synthetic into there, mid-grade Fram filter, every 5K-6K miles.
Done it myself for the past 15 years, with very rare exceptions.
kc - This is my third BMW and all of them were provided with free oil changes but only for the period when the car was under warranty. I was also told that if I had an oil change that was not at the dealer it would void the warranty.
That seems to be becoming standard. It is almost impossible to document otherwise to a big corporation’s satisfaction.
Every 5000 miles. Easy to keep up with on the odometer. Could do 10,000 if I went to full synthetic, but rotating tires every 500miles keeps the wear very even. Also can use cheaper filters when changing every 5000 miles.
Should do it by oil color anyway. But by 5000 miles mine is always dark brown anyway.
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