No oil change indicator?

[mattwithcats]

For all you folks with either malfunctioning odometers and / or no oil change indicator,
here is a way to keep track of when to change your oil, oil filter, and engine air filter...

Put a vibration hour meter in the vehicle, mounted to a hard surface.
You can use Velcro..

At 60 hours dino oil, and 200 synthetic, change the engine oil and oil filter.
At 300 dino and 400 synthetic, change the engine air filter...

Vibration Hour Meter

 

[901Memphis]

Interesting. I wonder how accurate it is as far as making sure its logging hours when its supposed to be goes. I always wonder why hour meters aren't standard on all vehicles. It would give a much better idea of if a car was used as a taxi or not.

 

[asiancivicmaniac]

Easier to go by date if the odometer stopped. If an odometer stops functioning, it's probably an older car anyways. 6 months dino or 12 months synthetic for normal driving is easy to keep track.

 

[Lyman]

Better yet buy a cheap GPS unit. They have speedo and odometer functions.

 

[Shannow]

That's really really neat.

Thanks for posting.

 

[Trav]

Sounds like something handy for small stationary engines like emergency generators.
Thanks i will check that out.

 

[skyactiv]

VW and Audi engine hours and # of engine starts can be retrievd with a VCDS interface setup.

 

[Vikas]

I don't think I can use it on my Lexus. Remember balancing the champagne glasses on the engine?

 

[Garak]

I've seen old style hour meters that ran off of engine vibration, but never an LCD one. Nice find! Ironically, the newer style one like the one you showed us makes more sense to me.

 

[bigt61]

60 hours on Dino oil? Taxi cabs would be changing their oil every 3 days.

 

[Clevy]

My dodge had an hour meter. I'd reset it every oil change. 200 hours is when I changed it because I had many idle hours onsite in the winter.
50 hours is overkill. If no odometer maybe go with fuel burned rather than time or mileage.

 

[fdcg27]

Originally Posted By: Clevy
My dodge had an hour meter. I'd reset it every oil change. 200 hours is when I changed it because I had many idle hours onsite in the winter.
50 hours is overkill. If no odometer maybe go with fuel burned rather than time or mileage.


This is the answer.
Track fuel burned and change based upon that.
For example, if I want to do 4K changes with my old BMW, this would be around 125 gallons of fuel. If more frequent changes are warranted due to severe operating conditions, fuel use would also account for that.
IIRC, some makers, including BMW at some point, calibrated their maintenance minders based upon fuel use alone.
This was found to be a good and inexpensive surrogate for an IOLM which uses a sophisticated alogorythm and accounts for many different variables.
Hard use, cold weather, frequent starts with short trips and heavy loads all cause increased fuel consumption, so fuel consumption alone can be used to measure oil life.

 

[yesthatsteve]

Originally Posted By: bigt61
60 hours on Dino oil? Taxi cabs would be changing their oil every 3 days.


For me, 60 hours is normally about 5-6 weeks and 2000-2300 miles. That's way too short an OCI for my driving habits and the 1NZ-FE in the xB. Ultragauge has a readout for hours running, and I'm at 58 hours and 2100 miles after changing the oil on 5/19.

Translating the 5k factory recommendation into hours for me is 140-145 hours.