Originally Posted By: Nick1994
Originally Posted By: 2010_FX4
Originally Posted By: Nick1994
Originally Posted By: FutureDoc
I have to bite my tongue. At an event, a shop we invite to do public vehicle safety checks recommends 3,000mi changes with syn-blend. My fleet is on a 7,500mi schedule (on their oil no less). Fleet users freak out when they see the odometer 2-3K over the sticker. I tell folks it is more how it is driven and they look at me oddly... then ask how often I change my personal car. I tell them 5,000 or 7,500+ or... depending on the vehicle. Technically it is by the manual (vehicle under warranty), 6 months (few miles driven) and 3,000 miles (because I am bored and have 50+ quarts in the closet with an average cost of about $1.90 per quart).
They'd freak out at my 10k mile OCIs.
heh...or my 15K+
Oh geez your motors must be completely sludged! I'm already 5,000 miles into my OCI, I bet it looks like tar! Oh wait it does, it's a diesel!
Ha, you should look at my diesels. They fall under "special conditions" of special conditions. Diesels can definitely go longer, but don't do that with a transit-shuttle fleet. My Ford PS6.0 "aka 6 liters of junks" can definitely go 7,500 (see manual). But, my fleet that I inherited went far to long before their change in previous years (heck, my predecessor was trying to run B20 (or higher) with 4 hours of idling per service day). They are/were in rough shape with 8,000 hours and 2000 idle hours on the clock with no real service history and they limped on (and used up 70% of my maintenance budget in the first 5 months). Now, they are on 5K intervals because it is 5-35mph transit service... if they had not blown the turbo (twice), oil cooler, and a few other odd items. Collectively, I think they had about 4-5 oil changes in about 400 miles.
If you really want to freak someone out, try talking about hours instead of miles to the finance and purchasing folks. Sure, my buses only have 60-70K on them, but with 10,000+ hours on Ford 6.0, it is going to an issue. The buses run 10 hours a day on average and collect 100 miles under the new system (compared to 70 miles over 12 hour with the old).
I applaud the high OCI... I just can't do it with my personal vehicles (I do not collect enough miles). I do it with my non-transit fleet which collect mostly highway miles, but I can't do it for the transit vehicles.
