Has anyone noticed in the Owners Manual that there are actually two schedules listed for service intervals (oil changes, etc.) depending on operating conditons..

The 3750 mile interval that we are all familiar with is identified as Schedule 1 and recommended for cars used for short trips (under 5 miles/day), extreme cold conditions, or dusty conditions, etc. Schedule 2 is recommended for all other conditions and is a 7500 mile oil change interval.

What this says to me is that I only need to change oil every 7500 miles and will still meet warranty. I guess I will now go to synthetic on my next oil change (which I was planning to do anyway) and go for 7500 miles.

Has anyone else noticed this 7500 schedule?. What do you all think???

 

95% of G drivers fall under the 1st schedule. I don't know your driving habits or driving schedule. I know I do more than 5 miles, I'm in bumper to bumper traffic, etc so I'd fall in the 3750 mile category. I went to synthetic on my 2nd oil change.

 

The best thing to do, to find out exactly how long your oil stays good, is to send a sample off to blackstone labs and have them do an oil analysis. They can tell you how your engine is doing, how long your oil holds up, etc... Really informative and pretty inexpensive.

BlackStone Labs

Justin McClanahan
Heavily Modified 95 Infiniti G20
Working on a G35 Project Coupe
EverythingG35.com

 

there are alot of blackstone labs reports on VQs floating around. Extended drain intervals dont produce the most postive results. Of course environment and driving style will vary greatly. You should extend your drain like 1000 miles and do a blackstone each time until you find a confortable/safe drain interval. I would be surprised if you got past 6-7K with good results. You can find oil that will take the abuse, but we just dont have the filtration to support 7-8K. I blast around the city all day and even tho I use Mobil1 and PureOnes, my blackstones have shown I shouldnt go much past 4K.

 

Thanks tpware!

Only 4K miles on Mobile 1? Wow, that seems really low for synthetic. I was planning on going with Mobile 1 starting with my next oil change (at 11K miles). If Mobile 1 is only good for 4K, now I really wonder about regular oil!!

 

well, technically its not the Mobil1 breaking down. Its more of a filtration issue. BMW and Merc use a higher quantity of oil and a sump system to go 12K...

I do 95% city driving.. so the VQ is running pretty rich... in my case it does affect the syn a bit.. which is all the more reason to use syn as dino would be affected even more. My maxima blackstone reports looked about the same, as does my wife's pathfinder with the same amount of city driving. Extended drain would be nice :/ syn isnt cheap.. but at least I'm getting alittle extra protection near the end of the interval.

 

Thanks again, tpware:

Yes, I was aware that BMW's full maintence coverage only includes oil changes every 15K with synthetic. I have a 540 and have been changing the oil every 7.5K with BMW synthetic. That is why I was expecting to easily get to 7.5K with synthetic on the G. But if our G's filtration is inferior to BMW's as you state, I guess I'll follow your every 4K recommendation with the synthetic (as my driving is similar to yours).
I picked up the Mobil 1 at Costco for about $20 for 6 quarts. I'm in LA where it is warm, so I am going with 10-30 rather than the 5-30 weight.