The main reason I change oil at 3000 miles...sludge!

[Navi]

You can go ahead and search on Google and Youtube to learn about sludge if you are not knowledgable. In "severe" and "extreme" duty driving one challenge is sludge.

Sludge is the main reason I change the oil every 3000 miles. Most notably I found the best oil to be one with the most detergents. Through my testing and reviews of VOAs I found the best value oil to be Quaker State High Mileage Full Synthetic but the best oil to be the Valvoline family which has detergent rich formulations.

For Ford Ecoboost engines I use Valvoline Full Synthetic Max Life. For the GMs I use Dexos rated Quaker State High Mileage Full Synthetic. Both are detergent rich oils.

My real life experience is the livery business in and around New York City. I have had engines sludge up in the past. When I first started in the industry I did 5000 and 7000 mile intervals and through hard lessons I learned 3000 is the way to go.

Here is one video from the Ford tech of a sludged engine. However there are countless videos and articles which can be found with a Google search. If you ask any mechanic they will tell you to change at 3000 miles and why? Sludge!

We all have different situations. If you lease or plan on selling before 70000 miles a 3000 mile interval may not matter to you. However if you plan on keeping the vehicle above 100000 miles or describe your use as "Severe" or "Extreme" duty trust me...3000 is the way to go.

 

[92saturnsl2]

Regular maintenance is the key. 3 or 5, 7 , 10K intervals, there's too many variables to make a blanket statement.

I'll add my experience here: All of the cars in my signature have never been plagued with sludge, nor have any I've owned previously. I think you're thinking about it too much. My criteria in oil is thus:

buy quality syn oils on sale when able (I'm brand agnostic)
Use synthetic oils where appropriate (my DI engines it's a must for me)
short trip driving / lots of stop and go use: 5K intervals
my regular highway-type commute: 7.5 -10K.

 

[I<3oil]

Oh, okay.

 

[supton]

NYC is different than NH. My cars easily did 10k oci and trooped past 100k. Now with DI I have defaulted to 5k but that is more out of FUD.

YMMV.

 

[Navi]

I am not overthinking it. My style of driving is clearly severe or extreme duty in the livery industry and described as taxi/livery/police in maintenance manuals. In addition to the 70k to 100k miles put on per year I cant be sure how much idle time but its a lot. These are not commuter vehicles.

 

[nickaluch]

Livery business in NYC miles are irrelevant when it comes to oil changes hours matter. When I had my business I ran 3 vehicles in NYC I changed the oil full syn every 2 months idling, traffic was a issue they ran 8 hours a day 5 days a week but traveled little miles

 

[M1Accord]

70k-100k annual mileage at 3k OCI means you changed oil every other week?

 

[Navi]

70k-100k annual mileage at 3k OCI means you changed oil every other week?

2 to 3 weeks

 

[Yolo]

As I recall, I saw the same guy doing cam phasers on a 3.5 going on about how great the engine looked at 5k intervals of Mobil 1. 5k works for me but to each their own.

 

[Yolo]

As I recall, I saw the same guy doing cam phasers on a 3.5 going on about how great the engine looked at 5k intervals of Mobil 1. 5k works for me but to each their own.

 

[Rogueman2016s]

You can go ahead and search on Google and Youtube to learn about sludge if you are not knowledgable. In "severe" and "extreme" duty driving one challenge is sludge.

Sludge is the main reason I change the oil every 3000 miles. Most notably I found the best oil to be one with the most detergents. Through my testing and reviews of VOAs I found the best value oil to be Quaker State High Mileage Full Synthetic but the best oil to be the Valvoline family which has detergent rich formulations.

For Ford Ecoboost engines I use Valvoline Full Synthetic Max Life. For the GMs I use Dexos rated Quaker State High Mileage Full Synthetic. Both are detergent rich oils.

My real life experience is the livery business in and around New York City. I have had engines sludge up in the past. When I first started in the industry I did 5000 and 7000 mile intervals and through hard lessons I learned 3000 is the way to go.

Here is one video from the Ford tech of a sludged engine. However there are countless videos and articles which can be found with a Google search. If you ask any mechanic they will tell you to change at 3000 miles and why? Sludge!

We all have different situations. If you lease or plan on selling before 70000 miles a 3000 mile interval may not matter to you. However if you plan on keeping the vehicle above 100000 miles or describe your use as "Severe" or "Extreme" duty trust me...3000 is the way to go.

 

[kschachn]

This has a lot to do with the specific engine and the oxidative stability of the oil (not seen on a $30 spectrographic analysis). There is no way my old 1MZ-FE could have made it to 450,000 miles on cheap oil and long OCIs. For that car it’s nothing but a high quality oil with a demanding approval.

On the other hand my equally old 1NZ-FE has spotless internals on “normal” synthetic oil with 10,000 mile OCIs. A completely different engine.

It’s not as simple as 3,000 mile OCIs.

 

[CKN]

You can go ahead and search on Google and Youtube to learn about sludge if you are not knowledgable. In "severe" and "extreme" duty driving one challenge is sludge.

Sludge is the main reason I change the oil every 3000 miles. Most notably I found the best oil to be one with the most detergents. Through my testing and reviews of VOAs I found the best value oil to be Quaker State High Mileage Full Synthetic but the best oil to be the Valvoline family which has detergent rich formulations.

For Ford Ecoboost engines I use Valvoline Full Synthetic Max Life. For the GMs I use Dexos rated Quaker State High Mileage Full Synthetic. Both are detergent rich oils.

My real life experience is the livery business in and around New York City. I have had engines sludge up in the past. When I first started in the industry I did 5000 and 7000 mile intervals and through hard lessons I learned 3000 is the way to go.

Here is one video from the Ford tech of a sludged engine. However there are countless videos and articles which can be found with a Google search. If you ask any mechanic they will tell you to change at 3000 miles and why? Sludge!

We all have different situations. If you lease or plan on selling before 70000 miles a 3000 mile interval may not matter to you. However if you plan on keeping the vehicle above 100000 miles or describe your use as "Severe" or "Extreme" duty trust me...3000 is the way to go.

It's good to justify a "money flush" to your self. Just not to others......

 

[dnewton3]

I concur with kschachn; cleanliness isn't only a function of OCI.
In addition to the OCI, the add pack, the engine series lineage, the unique application; they all play into this.

For a great cleaning lube, it's hard to beat the HPL PCEO for it's superior add-pack inclusion of ester/AN. (Price is steep, but if you want "clean", this is one of the top choices out there). You could run HPL PCEO for 10-15k miles, and the engine would likely still be cleaner than using low-cost alternatives at 3k miles.

 

[Cujet]

Neither engine would look like that with M1, 10W-30 or 10W-40 HM and 5000 mile oil changes. They'd be spotless under both valve covers, no phaser problems and no tensioner problems.

 

[OVERKILL]

You can go ahead and search on Google and Youtube to learn about sludge if you are not knowledgable. In "severe" and "extreme" duty driving one challenge is sludge.

Sludge is the main reason I change the oil every 3000 miles. Most notably I found the best oil to be one with the most detergents. Through my testing and reviews of VOAs I found the best value oil to be Quaker State High Mileage Full Synthetic but the best oil to be the Valvoline family which has detergent rich formulations.

For Ford Ecoboost engines I use Valvoline Full Synthetic Max Life. For the GMs I use Dexos rated Quaker State High Mileage Full Synthetic. Both are detergent rich oils.

My real life experience is the livery business in and around New York City. I have had engines sludge up in the past. When I first started in the industry I did 5000 and 7000 mile intervals and through hard lessons I learned 3000 is the way to go.

Here is one video from the Ford tech of a sludged engine. However there are countless videos and articles which can be found with a Google search. If you ask any mechanic they will tell you to change at 3000 miles and why? Sludge!

We all have different situations. If you lease or plan on selling before 70000 miles a 3000 mile interval may not matter to you. However if you plan on keeping the vehicle above 100000 miles or describe your use as "Severe" or "Extreme" duty trust me...3000 is the way to go.

I don't see any sludge there.

I see varnish in both engines and in the 2nd one, some carbonaceous accumulation in a lacquer or resin coated soot particles. Sludge has a moisture component, per this diagram I've posted many times over the years:

 

[Pablo]

I concur with kschachn; cleanliness isn't only a function of OCI.
In addition to the OCI, the add pack, the engine series lineage, the unique application; they all play into this.

For a great cleaning lube, it's hard to beat the HPL PCEO for it's superior add-pack inclusion of ester/AN. (Price is steep, but if you want "clean", this is one of the top choices out there). You could run HPL PCEO for 10-15k miles, and the engine would likely still be cleaner than using low-cost alternatives at 3k miles.

Or Amsoil or other quality oil

If your oil is sludgy at 3K something is drastically wrong

 

[DemoFly]

Mileage is a completely useless metric in these comparisons.

 

[dogememe]

There was no sludge in my 2010 Escape when I changed the valve cover gaskets at around 130k miles. Oil change intervals ranged from 8 to 13k miles. So I think the case for 3k mile oil change intervals across the board simply based on sludge is absurd.

 

[Navi]

The Ford Escape engine was probably a Mazda port injected engine. Its when Ford added direct injection and turbos to it when the issues started coming up. The old boxy Escapes were very reliable...thanks to Mazda and didnt require a lot of maintenance.