Mobil 1 drain intervals?

[Tony Kimmell]

Hi all,
I've got a 2000 GMC Sonoma with the 2.2L/auto. Currently it has 47,000 miles on it. I run a rural newspaper delivery route that requires driving 88 miles round trip every morning. I figure that by the time I drive the route, and drive into town to my "real" job and back, on average I put a little over 100 miles a day on this truck.

I've only had the truck for a little over 3 weeks. The oil was changed at the dealer before I bought it, and now I'm already up to the 3000 mile mark (I don't know what kind of oil they used, so I'm going to change it now to be on the safe side).

The 88 mile paper route is virtually all stop-and-go driving (I make 71 delivery stops). I know this can be hard on motor oil, so given the operating conditions, what would a good drain interval be?

I've never really used Mobil 1 before, but I understand that you can run long intervals between changes. What would be a smart interval to use? 6,000 miles? Less/more? The oil cap says 5w30, so I assume that's the best weight to use?

My goal here is to not have to change my oil every 3-4 weeks, and to keep this engine running as long as I can, since it will probably have 200,000+ miles on it in a few years.

Any input would be appreciated, thanks.

Tony Kimmell
Towanda, IL

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

Tony,

You have a quandry. Although the oil is in stop and go driving, it's not in short on and off driving which I believe will kill the oil faster.

I'm sure you'll be told to get a couple of trend analyses to see what's going on.

My humble opinion is that you could go 6k and feel comfortable with M1. I also feel you could probably go 5k with a good dino as your driving mimmicks the Taxi cab test that consumer reports did a number of years ago.

Again, JMO.

 

[Patman]

With periodic oil analysis, I could see this truck easily being able to handle 15k oil changes using either Mobil 1 or (preferably) Amsoil.

As I've mentioned in other threads though, never go right up to a 15k interval, do the first one at 5k, the second one at 10k and then the third one at 15k. Oil analysis should be done on the 10k and 15k run, then after that it's up to you how often to do oil analysis just to keep an eye on things (do it maybe once or twice a year as a checkup)

It's good to see you aren't going the route of some people who still stick to 3k oil changes even when they put on tons of miles like this. The worst offender has to be that guy who hit one million miles in his truck, driving 800 miles per day but still doing 3k oil changes! So he was getting his oil changed every single week! He wasted so much time doing that, when he could've used a good synthetic and could've gone a month or two between oil changes.

 

[pscholte]

I would go either Mobil Delvac1 or Amsoil S3K 5W30 and agree with Patman...use progressively increasing OCIs with a UOA after each to see how far you can safely go.

 

[pezzulli]

Couldn't he just install a good bypass filter and change once a year?

 

[Patman]

quote:

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Originally posted by pezzulli:
Couldn't he just install a good bypass filter and change once a year?

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If he installed a bypass filter he'd probably never need to change his oil for 100,000 miles! Although most people might find that solution a lot more complicated, and just prefer to run synthetic and a regular oil filter out to 10-15k intervals.

 

[Al]

I would agree with Groucho. Ideally you should use Auto-RX You should then sample the next Mobil1 change at about 6K. After that you should be able to go perhaps 10K miles with a filter at say 5K . There are other options of course and hopefully others will give you information. But probably without doing anything you could go 7K for sure without doing anything after this Mobil 1 run .

 

[msparks]

quote:

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Originally posted by Tony Kimmell:
Hi all,

My goal here is to not have to change my oil every 3-4 weeks, and to keep this engine running as long as I can, since it will probably have 200,000+ miles on it in a few years.

Any input would be appreciated, thanks.

Tony Kimmell
Towanda, IL

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My #1 advice is to invest in a by-pass system. If your running those kind of miles you would pay off the system in about 1 year. Then after that it's all savings.

Mobil 1 is fine, if you want to stick with that. I'd say you should have no problem getting 50,000+ out of an oil change! Plus the fact that you will be reducing engine wear to near 0 if you remove particles in the 5-20 micron range.

Good Luck