No oil change at all. How long will it last?

[callbay]

Any stories about how many miles an engine will last when the original fill was never changed?

Or an oil change was left in till the engine quit for good. Conventional or synthetic?

 

[bluestream]

Originally Posted By: callbay
Any stories about how many miles an engine will last when the original fill was never changed?

Or an oil change was left in till the engine quit for good. Conventional or synthetic?


If you search the archives there is A saturn that went 200K with no oil changes, just top ups. I know a guy with a Dodge pick-up who changes oil every "2-3 years" with synthetic. He has 450,000KM on it and it runs fine

 

[qdeezie]

I've always heard about 30K to 40K miles with the original dino factory fill.

 

[nfs480]

The only person I know whose engine seized without oil changes had it seize after like 30k miles without a change. I think it was a saturn of some kind but I can't remember for sure.

 

[electrolover]

i bought a car that had 30k on one fill. needless to say it was an ugly ordeal.

 

[Barkleymut]

I know someone that bought a new Suburban in the early 90s and ran it to around 35K when it decided that their owners had mental limitations and decided to quit transporting them.

Knowing the owners they probably heard 100K spark plugs and thought that applied to oil changes also.

I also have a friend that worked for a very well known large company that had a company issued Taurus. I would guess it was a 2000 or 01 that he got right off the showroom floor. As his only friend that knows the difference between an oil filter and a fuel filter he asked me to take a look at it. It was knocking really bad so i looked at the mileage. 14K and no oil showing up on dipstick. Added 3 qts of oil and it ran fine, of course I'm sure there was some really accelerated wear. Asked him where he just got the oil changed at thinking some moron didn't add enough...but he said he had been meaning to get the oil changed but hadn't done it yet. So next time you are looking at a used car and it says fleet maintained, take that with a grain of salt.

 

[Hemi426]

I was at my friend's repair garage about eight-ten years ago. He was working on a Dodge Ram 5.2(318) that had seized up because the owner had run the factory fill 57,000 miles without ever changing the oil. My friend pulled the drain plug and nothing came out so he dropped the pan and it looked like it was full of black Crisco shortening. Funny part was the owner was pi$$ed off at Chrysler and wanted pictures taken because he insisted Chrysler was going to give him a new engine free of charge! lol!

 

[Barkleymut]

I think Chrysler would be proud to know an engine ran that long on a factory fill. Then they could tell him to buy a Ford or Chevy and see how many miles he could get before he ruined that engine.

 

[fdcg27]

Of the cases mentioned above, did the engines die simply for not having had their oil changed, or did they die because they were run long enough to have been run dry?
I would think anyone too simple to change the oil, or have it changed, would be unlikely to check the dipstick.

 

[ddean]

I had a co worker twenty years ago tell me about a '86 Pontiac Bonneville that his brother had seen towed into the dealership. It had the FWD 3.8L Buick V-6 (think pre 3800) engine that had never had the oil (it still had the factory filter) changed @ 62k miles. Fellow was a salesman and just never bothered with changing out the oil, just adding if it needed it (probably prompted by a low oil pressure light). Those nice aluminum valve covers were filled with jello like sludge when pulled. I forget what a new engine cost for the thing at the time but it was expensive. Note that was with API SF or so grade oil and remember that the fuel injected Buick engines of that time period would use 1 quart of oil about every 4-5k miles assuming no leaks.

Note that there had been stories here of people running a toilet paper bypass filters on new cars in the 1960's and 1970's for x00 K miles. Usually the factory oil was changed out and maybe a normal change or two to clean out the wear metal from break in. If the normal oil filter was kept, then a new oil filter and new tp roll every 3k miles, plus 2.5 qts of new oil (1 qt normal use, 1 qt for tp element, .5 qt for new filter) was like changing the oil every 6-7k miles with excellent filtration.

 

[electrolover]

with my car, as soon as i got i changed the oil. between the sludge and my frequent 7k rpm shifts it soon started smoking and using oil. i pulled the pan and valve cover and cleaned it out and ran gtx 20/50 for last 75k of its life.

it was a nissan 200sx 2.0 liter. it had 114k when i got it and i recycled it at 200k.

a while before i bought it from my friend, i was riding in it and when taking a turn the oil light came on and it started rattling. when we got to the gas station to add oil it was 3qts low, it only held 4. i guess 30k with out a change will use some oil.

 

[TFB1]

I dunno if it was the factory fill but a a buddy recently bought a non running '98 Buick Regal at the auction with 42Kmi(looked very nice, obviously garage kept)... On inspection he found it was full of sludge and had a broken camshaft, he replaced the engine...

 

[Hemi426]

My aunt had a nice 1990 Mercury Cougar V6 that she and her husband bought brand new when they moved to Virginia Beach. Then about 1997 they moved back. The car had 52k miles on it. One early summer day I asked her If she minded if I gave the car a look over and she said sure. I crawled underneath to take a look at the oil filter and I was shocked to see a faded, rusted, barely recognizable Pennzoil filter. I thought to myself, well she had the oil changed sometime but how long ago? I didn't even pull the dipstick because I didn't really want to see. I asked her how long it had been since she had had the oil changed? She replied that she didn't ever remember having it changed. I knew she had gone once to a Jiffy Lube because of the Pennzoil oil filter. I figured that this car had its oil changed maybe once in 52k miles! I told her I was going to change her oil for free so I picked up a 5 qt. jug of Pennzoil Conventional 10w30 and a Wix filter. When I pulled the drain plug the oil gushed out as thin as and as black as ink. I really didn't expect anything to come out as I expected the engine to be total sludge. I installed the new filter and put in the fresh Pennzoil 10w30 and took over the oil change routine on the car and it was still running at 120,000 miles when she sold it years later. Either Ford builds good engines or Pennzoil is a darn good oil to run that long and not be complete sludge. Maybe a combination of both?

 

[dishdude]

I worked in a shop out of highschool in the mid 90's, and it was more common than not that cars would come in with faded oil filter and stickers, with dipsticks not registering any oil or just a tiny drop on the end of the stick. The owners would be complaining about what a pile of you know that the car was because it need a battery, or a set of brakes.

You'd suggest an oil change and they get all defensive like you are pulling a scam which is when every excuse in the book would come out. "I am getting rid of the car, I just had it done, I will have it done next week."

 

[callbay]

I worked with a young gal that had an old Porsche Boxster. I asked her if I could check the oil. Dipstick broken off. She said it had been that way since she bought the car a couple of years ago. I kept asking her if she had ordered one. She never did so finally she let me change the oil. My son and I just put in new oil (& filter) per the specified amout as a way to make sure it had enough. She moved out of town and the car probably still way to check the oil.

 

[A_Harman]

35 years ago, truckers were famous for NEVER changing oil in their 2-stroke Detroit Diesels. Those engines consumed so much oil, they were continually getting a fresh supply.

 

[addyguy]

Little while ago, I fininshed a 21k run on coonventional, with 2 quarts top-off. UOA is in that section.

Oil was in passable shape - still within visc. spec, and actually didn't 'look' that bad on the dipstick.

I think as long as you keep an engione topped off, it will go a LONG time on an OCI - these days, maybe even lifetime.

Key is to keep the oil topped off, never let it get very low - I think that a lot of engines that die from lack of oil chages actually die MORE from low oil levels that the actual condition of the oil. I never let mine get more tha 1/2 quart low.

 

[dparm]

Topping off is effectively the same as changing the oil very slowly and gradually.

 

[Patman]

A few years ago a friend of mine was a service manager at a local Chevy dealer and he told me that about once a month they'd get a car come in with a seized engine that had never had any oil changes done since new, and the typical mileage they had on them at the time was between 50,000 to 70,000 km.

 

[DavidZ28]

Working at a Chevrolet dealer in the early 90's we had an Astro van come in with a locked up engine, 36K miles on it with the original oil filter.