Question on oil life monitors

[RowdyYates]

How do oil life monitors work? Are they hr. monitors? Do they take into account idle time? Are they accurate?
I work Law Enforcement and drive a Chevy Impala. These cars run about 12 hrs. non stop. See a lot of idle time and stop and go traffic. They also get quick accelerations.
The shop that maintains the fleet uses NAPA conv. oil and Napa Filters. My car goes nearly 5000 miles until it indicates time for an oil change.

 

[tomcat27]

Most monitors (including the GM one) run through a series of algorythems to calculate run time, RPM, temperature, load, and other parameters. a few years back there was a link here to a story from one of the engineers on the GM project. pretty cool stuff.

 

[RowdyYates]

Thanks. Just goes to show how much abuse oil can take these days. Patrol cars get worked hard. This amazes me that the oil can last this long under this stress.

 

[endeavor to persevere]

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=130050&page=1

 

[RowdyYates]

thanks for the post. Very interesting read.

 

[SaturnIonVue]

Sad to say, if I recall correctly the poster bbobinsky was one of the few experts around on this subject, but he like so many other real pros over the years caught so much grief from some posters that he and others just gave up posting!! What a shame to have lost these people. Too bad the mods couldn't or didn't warn some highly critical and ignorantly opinionated posters to back-off and stop killing the messenger. Most of the professionals we've had that left, just couldn't suffer fools and I can't say I blame them. Thank G for Molacule and others who have stayed around.

 

[Virtuoso]

^ Sad but true.

Oil life monitors are really pretty "smart" pieces.

 

[threeputtpar]

Originally Posted By: SaturnIonVue
Sad to say, if I recall correctly the poster bbobinsky was one of the few experts around on this subject, but he like so many other real pros over the years caught so much grief from some posters that he and others just gave up posting!! What a shame to have lost these people. Too bad the mods couldn't or didn't warn some highly critical and ignorantly opinionated posters to back-off and stop killing the messenger. Most of the professionals we've had that left, just couldn't suffer fools and I can't say I blame them. Thank G for Molacule and others who have stayed around.


True dat!