You're supposed to change the oil...

yeah 3-5k

 

the US is trying to push it to 5k now

 

I wouldn't trust Honeywell filters at all. While there are a lot of very good options, you'd be surprised how many people would just buy the cheapest oil filter they can find at Kragens.

As for everything else about oil, I've met the right people in the motor oil industry and learned from them. Please enlighten me with your knowledge to prove what I've learned wrong.

 

I put so few miles on my cars, I force myself to change mine every 5 months, regardless of it usually being only 3-4k at 6 months.

 

In the manual it says 3750 for severe (it's cold here ). I usually do it at 3k tho.

 

That's to decrease your dependency on 'foreign' oil. (Like, from Canada)

 

Yes lots of people buy cheap filters, but none of them say anything about mileage other than to go with your owners manual. I do agree with you that I wouldn't go more than a good amount of miles on a cheap filter but in reality people do it all the time and dont really have an issue, but I do not want cardboard endcaps and leaky anti drainback valve thats my preference. So I buy a quality filter, a quality filter can easily do 10k witch is not a Honeywell.

Also the same with oil, no oil is "rated" for life other than for marketing. I could easily go over 7500 with x oil. Or I could only got 5k miles with another oil that says its good for 15k miles. Just because it states a mileage does not mean you will be able to do that. It all depends on how your engine works with oil. Some times the extended life oils that say(15k)..ect have a stouter oil package and a Strong TBN count which can support longer OCI's but it might not work for your engine. For example the VQ engines are notorious for tearing up oil which makes for short OCI's but as Oil technology improves you can easily run longer, like the guy who ran with Edge for 9k miles.

Synthetic oil is not just rated for 7500 miles period. With your logic your saying even though the TBN count is good and ppm of all the internal materials in the oil are normal, you need to throw away the oil because as its only rated for 7500? I simply do not understand how you even came to this conclusion.

Lastly, oil simply does not have a break in period. Its Viscosity only increases with time just like conventional oil due to combustion by products and such. Google it and try to find an article that talks about "Synthetic oil break in" find an SAE Paper, find anything. I want to learn as well.

 

I forgot what it was exactly, but the break in has something to do with the lubricants in the oil, the polymers that provide the protection we use oil for.

Now, I never said you can't run an oil for longer periods of time, but you need to know how to properly select your oil. And yes, like you said it depends on your motor, rather what materials are used inside your motor as different oils have different amounts of lead and other metals in them. All the info on the back of the container will tell you all about the oil if you can understand the jargon. Quite honestly, I forgot what's what, but I do remember that any motor can run any synthetic safely for about 5-7k miles. From there, it's if you bought the right oil.

 

As for the filter, yes, you can just recycle the oil without it being filtered and your car will run just fine for a while, because a bad filter is doing just this. A filter is just a filter, and in fact, while it's not suggested, you can run your car without an intake filter and be perfectly fine until some debris gets sucked in. And on the other hand, you can just try to run any oil for 10k miles expecting it to work just fine, but hey, it's your motor.

 

I use mineral oil and was doing every the oil change at 3k till now. For this time i am trying to get it done at 3500 miles. Is it a good practice? Have done 98200 miles till now all on mineral oil. Does it make sense to switch to synthetic now?

 

I run Amsoil 5W-30 in all my cars and change the oil and filter at 10k or 12 months. Which ever comes first.
I've got 210,000 miles on my '97 Maxima and it's still running strong. Doesn't any oil between changes.

 

2-3k...oil and filter. Funny story, when I bought my car, the stealership ofcourse tried to sell me all these "add-on" warranty/coverage features...one of which was free oil changes every 4k miles. I told them no thanks, that I do most of my own work. So they came back at me and said well how often do you change it? I said 2k miles or so....and the guys was like why??? I said, because I can. Needless to say, that shut him up.

 

Um, depends.. 4-5k usually.

 

The Jargon on the rear of the bottle will not tell you what its made up of, its a trade secret . They might say something in the PDS or MSDS but never elements. The rear of the bottles will just list the certifications that the oil meets. Oils have different base stocks and make ups they generally do not contain lead (LOOK HERE) Diffrent addtative packs or base stock might work with your engine better than others. There is nothing to remember or forget, I dont know who has been feeding you miss information but no you cannot just blindly run any synthetic safely for 5-7k miles if your manual says to run shorter OCI's. You might buy synthetic oil and have to change it in 2k miles. If you drive easily and do lots of highway, maybe 5-7k is feasible but you cannot just believe other people who have no idea how you drive or if you drive enough to let your engine come up to temp. Someone who lives a short drive from work and does not let their engine get to operating temperature is going to have a hell of a lot shorter OCI than someone who drives highway.

As it stands there is still no such thing as a break in of engine oil, telling me what you might of heard and saying you dont even remember what you heard isnt exactly turning me over, also not citing a credible source, or any for that mater is not any form of proof that it exists. Oil is rated by viscosity and it will protect your engine from day one. Period. IF for some instance synthetic oil had a break in period we would hear about it when the oil is getting tested for their certifications and they would Fail. Check out http://www.gf-5.com/

a bad filter will not just simply recycle the oil, that's the dumbest thing I heard. They will still filter the oil. The problem with bad filters as I said before have, crappy end caps and horrible anti drain back valves which leak and do not work. Also Some crappy filters have brittle filer media. With all of this said they do still filter the oil.

I would never ever try to run any oil for 10k miles expecting it to work just fine, that's exactly the opposite of what I would do. Thats like saying I can run on any synthetic oil for 5-7k miles expecting it to work just fine because the advertising on back of the bottle caught my eye and says I could do it.

If I were to run for 10k miles, I would do UOA's with TBN every 1k miles after 5k to see how things are doing. But this is supported only if you drive the same way most of the time as simply driving more aggressively could cause your 8...9k or 10k...etc mile UOA to show up not as well as it did before.