Extended drains and dino oil.

[Hemidart]

I am seeing a few new cars with extended drains. My Ion says to do an OCI when the oil life monitor says so, which was at 6.5k even though I changed my oil at 1k, 4k and went to M1 at 7k. With most people doing their oil changes at places like Jiffy Lube and others, and if they disreguarded the 3k recomendation of these places and just followed the manual. Would they not be harming their engine over the long term? I mean if I did my oil changes at these places and only did so when my oil life monitor said so, I would be putting 6.5k miles of hard, Los Angeles heat, heavy trafic on dino oil. I would be following my warranty to the letter, but might be shortening the life of my engine.

 

[Matt89]

That's the million dollar question. Nobody really knows the limits of dino oils because we're afraid to 'push it'.

In the back of my mind I'm thinking the world would be a much simpler place if everybody just followed the oil light...but then we'd have nothing to talk about.

 

[TexasTDI]

Several companies have pushed dino oil drain intervals with disasterous results.

Mercedes-Benz

Dodge

Toyota

All three companies used extended drain intervals with dino oils (more than 3000 miles) and all three companies are now paying for new engines for oil related engine failures.

 

[kickster]

I know for a fact that Dino in my VW will turn into black slime after 5000KM. Synthetic stay oil like for for much longer time.
My oil temp runs around 115c to 120c on high way.

 

[JohnnyO]

Any cars in my family that we go by the OLI, we run Mobil 1 in. Most cars with an OLI are designed with dino in mind. Dino would be okay except by the time an oil-related problem might show up, you'll probably be off warranty.

 

[Ugly3]

Come on now, there is all kinds of data to suggest 3,000 mile oil changes with dino is a waste of $$ for most people. Sure there is the special case of "sludge buckets" and "high performance" engines that need more frequent changes.

The data I have seen suggests that 5,000 mile oil changes are appropriate for the majority of cars. There are pleanty of people who run dino oils over 10,000 miles and laugh at the "gearheads" changing more frequently.

There is more than a little data that suggests engine wear per 1000 miles decreases after 3,000 miles and stays at the decreased levels until the oil dies.

So what is best? You pays your money and takes your chances.

 

[budweiser]

I change my oil about every 3000 for my 300td and about 8000 for the gas cars with the syn. it also depends on how and where you drive ect. ALL that has been said about( when is the best time),it does not take much effort to just change it when you feel like it. Budweiser

 

[Matt89]

TDI;
Actually I believe in the case of the Benz's, people were following the oil life monitor (calibrated for Syn) using dino...