Changing oil by hours instead of miles

[Hirev]

Should we be changing oil by hours on oil instead of miles on oil? I started thinking hour meters should be on vehicles also.

Let say you average 50 MPH for 200 hours on oil it works out to 10,000 miles.

Let say you average 25 MPH for 200 hours on oil it works out to 5000 miles. Seems reasonable

But now let say you only drive a vehicle around town and only average 14 MPH suddenly were down to 2800 mile OCI for 200 hours.

Now let say you do 7500 miles OCI with a 15 MPH average in stop and go city traffic were up to 500 hours on the OCI.

Is changing oil by miles driven a crude way to do it?

 

[Louie's gone fishing]

Amount of fuel used, based on a formula for your car would be better. Drive harder, let it idle a lot, use more fuel, change the oil sooner. This method will compensate for how the vehicle is used and how much stress is place on the engine. But it's far too simple an idea for most people that would never take the time to understand how well it would work. With modern computers in cars it would be a no brainer to handle such a system. Then modifying the time during very cold weather would be easy. The heck with miles driven, just use time and fuel burned.

 

[Jimbo]

Newer GM trucks have built-in hour meters. Ford recommends 200 hours on trucks that are used in types of service where there is excessive idling.

 

[TallPaul]

GM's oil life monitor would be the best.

 

[LarryL]

Didn't Ted, aka Tooslick have a fuel usage, oil quality, vehicle use formula? It really would be the best way to change oil, based on what you're doing to the oil. Like Louie sez, the amount of gas one uses is a better meter than the odometer.

 

[fred]

I just change mine every year in september.

 

[shanneba]

Acording to my BMW 3 series service manual, the service indicator lights after using 601 gallons of fuel on a manual trans model, 667 for the automatic. This is for cars made from 6/2000 on.

 

[dkryan]

I agree with TallPaul.

I laughingly dismissed GM's OLM when I first received my company car, a 2005 Grand Prix. But this vehicle also displays total engine hours and tranny fluid temperature (which obviously has got nothing to do with the oil change) and it definitely reflects a quicker oil change if I've let the car sit and idle in the winter or I have above average city driving.

 

[m2200b]

Fuel seems like the best manual OLM for pre OLM cars.

If you have a mileage book you can just subtotal gallons used after each OCI. Mine would be 200 gallons based on my 25 mpg freeway use for 5000 freeway miles.

 

[StressSolutions]

That's how farmers do service on tractors, at least we did.