oil change for Mazda6 2.5

[pbm]

A friend has a 2010 Mazda6 with the 2.5 4 cylinder. She does approx. 30K a year with about 80% highway miles. Her manual recommends 6K OCIs (apparently there is no OLM).
Now that her free dealership oil changes are finished, she asked my advice on OCIs. Does anybody know if this 2.5 is easy/hard on oil? Would she be OK with 8K on PP, QSUD, M1 etc?
Thoughts?

PS: I drove her car yesterday and it's a nice driving car...

 

[Eddie]

The 2.5 is fairly easy on oil and with 80% highway miles per OC, I see no reason to not go out to 8K miles on PP. 10K may not be out of reason if backed up with a UOA. HOWEVER; since the vehicle is still under warranty, I would advise against going over the maximum factory recommended oil change mileage. Ed

 

[Indydriver]

Since it's still under warranty, I'd stick with a name brand conventional in the specified weight at the recommended interval. After warranty expiration, you can experiment with synthetics and extended OCI. Do you know if this engine is Direct Injection? If yes, I'd be sure to do UOAs to confirm oil condition as you extend. If not, and with her highway miles (easy on oil), then this engine and driving style will probably be very supportive of 8-10,000 on synthetics.

 

[pbm]

Thanks guys....I'm not sure if it's DI or not.
I can't find a lot of info on this motor online.
Apparently it's a bored and stroked 2.3 and it was changed for 2011. I'll tell her to stick with PYB (or other quality dino) for 6K OCIs until out of warranty.

 

[HTSS_TR]

I think for a few dollars above the dino Motorcraft semi-syn is easily do the 6k miles OCI.

 

[Klutch9]

This 2.5L is the exact same motor that Ford uses - like the one in our Fusion, for example. Ford recommends a 10,000 mile/1 year maximum OCI on any WSS-M2C930-A approved oil on our car (many dino oils meet or exceed this spec). The 2011/2012 Fusions have an IOLM to back this up. The 2010 does not have the IOLM system, and has a much more conservative 7,500 mile/6 month maximum OCI.

These engines have shown to be very easy on oil, and they are not direct injected.

 

[tig1]

I am doing 10K with my Duratechs with no problems.

 

[pbm]

Is the Mazda6's 2.5 and the Fusions 2.5 really the same engine?
If it is I would have no problem extending to 8K on synthetic.

 

[Klutch9]

Originally Posted By: pbm
Is the Mazda6's 2.5 and the Fusions 2.5 really the same engine?
If it is I would have no problem extending to 8K on synthetic.


Yep, same exact motor, both with VVT. Mazda calls theirs the 'MZR', Ford calls it the 'Duratec'. The same also applied to the 2.0L and 2.3L engines that were used in the Fusion, Mazda6, Focus, Mazda3, etc. Except with those two engines (2.0 & 2.3), the Mazda variants had VVT, whereas the Ford variants did not. Otherwise, they were nearly identical in every way.

Don't quote me on this next one, but IIRC the older 'Zetec' 2.0L Ford engine was also based on a Mazda design, though not as rigidly based as the MZRs/Duratecs are on each other.

 

[Thermo1223]

I run ours on the 7.5k OCI for warranty purposes only, I still use synthetic.

If it wasn't for that I'd have no reason to believe the engine couldn't go 10k miles or 1 year. I see no reason out of warranty to run it that long considering what was stated previously with Ford OLM is true.

MIL's 3.0 Escape ran 8k miles on the factory fill based on the OLM.