Driving a car short distances?

[JohnBrowning]

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/threads/2003-toyota-camry-3500-miles-m1r-0w30.17175/

This is a winter short trip galore UOA. It is not great but I dare say that I am not killing my car's life span by doing everything bad that I could concieve of! In fact I even used insanely high dosages of fuel injector cleaner just to make it the worst case I could think of. I had a lot of trips under 1 mile and I had insane amounts of prolonged idling! It is not that bad! Use a decent synthetic and let the rest sort itself out.

 

[Nickdfresh]

Originally Posted By: akk944
Hi all,
I am new to the forums and really happy I found these forums as it has helped me very much so far. However I still have an unanswered question that I can't figure out. It is about driving short distances. We have a 06 Acura TSX with ~25k miles and have been doing oil changes whenever the cars computer tells us to. It was driven pretty normal until September of last year when it was only driven on the weekdays less then 10 miles a day. Now the car needs to go to school and back (about 2 miles away) and i was wondering what is the best way to keep the car in shape since the distance is so short. I do not really want to start the car early since it's been in the garage always and I would like to keep it like that. Some side information is... the car has kendall synthetic blend (from an oil change place.. the $20 change place) right now, never had any engine issues, never raced the car (its 4 cylinder), and no mods to it. Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks
Kumar


How many miles a year? I'd use Motorcraft/Kendell/TropArc 5W-20 syn blend maybe changing it twice a year unless you drive less than 3000 miles every six months. In which case, I would do it once a year...

 

[akk944]

25k miles
06
Acura
TSX

Oh, and it will be driven to work some days after school so that would be a 20 mile round trip every few days. I was thinking of using mobil or some known branded dino...

thanks
kumar

p.s GAH i meant bus, I'd take the bust too if that was an option haha

 

[TooManyWheels]

Originally Posted By: akk944


Next... what is TBN?


TBN stands for Total Base Number ("base", meaning opposite of acidic). When the base is gone, the resistance to acid formation has gone also. TAN (total acidic number) is the counterpart to TBN. Neither is part of a cheap UOA, but TBN is probably more common than TAN in the options that you can add. If your analysis contains both, you should change out the oil when the TAN is greater than the TBN.

 

[bigjohn]

Originally Posted By: jorton
I think you should change oil and filter 3 times a year regardless of how few miles were driven.



We are in this position with three of our vehicles (wife and two kid cars). Our mileage isn't big, but with the numerous short trips, we choose to do 6 month OCI's with a high quality synthetic.

 

[jorton]

ok. Maybe 3 times is too many.

 

[FZ1]

I'm talking about the cost per mile of driving your car 25 maintainence miles per week (about 1200 miles) for 1 year at an estimated cost per mile of .30. Let's say you can drive for .20 a mile:That's still $240. a year. Maintainence miles is false economy. Just change the oil more frequently.

 

[akk944]

All right thanks.. I guess I'll get some PP from walmart even though i was hopping i could get away with dino.