Super short trips and Oil condition question.

[Johnny]

I posted this on another short trip driving thread, so I will copy and paste it here as well. Goes along with what hominid7 said.

Or, you can do what I do to my wife's car to help. Every Saturday morning we drive 35 miles down the interstate to one of our favorite hole in the wall breakfast places, then drive back. That little 70 mile round trip really helps to burn off condensation and excess fuel. Plus it saves me from having to cook on Saturday morning.

 

[Trvlr500]

I have the same problem so I just let the car warm up to operating temp before I drive off. I just switched back to dino because it's cheaper and I'll change the oil every 3 months or 2500-3000 miles. I also take the car out about twice a week and run it for about 30 minutes on the highway or just drive it around town.

 

[FL_Rob]

Urban sprawl is hard on oil.The nearest Interstate is 15mi away.Thats 15mi of stop and go before I can realize the benefits of 70mph run out.My normal commute is 1 mi each way and 1 mi to the store.The t-stat rarely even opens if its cool out.I change oil every 2 or 3 months no exceptions MC 5w20/ Pure One.Every 6 mos STP red bottle(for the zinc)...Extreme?Ok,heres the equipment.'93 chevy g20 van (350 of course)with TBI, no micro precise fuel metering going on here,cylinder wash aplenty,with hwy gears (3.08 I believe).So I'm happy if it hits 2200rpm between lights.Its got 189k on so there's still plenty of life left before buying another vehicle,A motorcycle is out of the question(kids).So even
synthetic would be fuel contaminated in no time with no way to burn it off.Good thing dino's come a long way.

 

[ottotheclown]

Keep in mind these little trips re. moisture in the oil, do not take in to account that though oil has dropped $6.00 a barrel or so, gas stays near $3.00 a gal. in most places.So having to drive 70 miles to compensate for short trips is dollar wise not such a good idea. Wonder what happened to that off shore drilling talk last summer??? Oh well we need to see what is in front of us this next year.

 

[Kiwi_ME]

I drove my purchased-new '91 Nissan truck 3 miles to work every weekday for 9 years in San Diego's mild weather. Weekends saw much more driving but after 70,000 miles the engine's timing cavity (visible down the oil filler) had thick brown deposits. OCI was about each 6 months, perhaps 4,500 miles on a 10w30 petroleum oil.

GF's Mazda was driven in a similar way in LA but was run on M1 since new. When I pulled the cam cover at 85k miles to fix a leaking gasket the engine still looked new inside.

 

[FL_Rob]

They shut those offshore talks down so that the chinese could buy the rights to the same prospect area to drill in the gulf off our shores instead of us..U.S.

 

[heypete]

Originally Posted By: 21Rouge
Is it possible that some of the "super-expensive stuff" might hold up better in the presence of fuel than dino or 'garden variety' synthetic?


Perhaps, but why not just follow the "severe schedule" from the car's manufacturer? Likely the severe interval was created assuming that users would have cheap, conventional oil (e.g. from a quick-change oil place), cheap filters, and have short, quick trips where the operating temperature is not yet reached.

If fuel dilution was a problem, I'd rather change out the oil often (after getting an used oil analysis to see how bad things are) rather than count on the robustness of a particular expensive oil.

 

[lexus114]

Originally Posted By: FL_Rob
They shut those offshore talks down so that the chinese could buy the rights to the same prospect area to drill in the gulf off our shores instead of us..U.S.


Our Country is it`s own worst enemy any more!

 

[heypete]

Originally Posted By: FL_Rob
They shut those offshore talks down so that the chinese could buy the rights to the same prospect area to drill in the gulf off our shores instead of us..U.S.


[citation needed]

 

[FL_Rob]

http://www.americanfreepress.net/html/china_starts_oil_drilling.html