I know alot of folks here change their oil every 3 to 3.5k ... and they do it wit Mobile 1.

Here's a link to a study showing that changing oil too frequently can actually lead to excessive engine wear.

From the article:

"Engine wear actually decreases as oil ages. This has also been substantiated in testing conducted by Ford Motor Co. and ConocoPhillips, and reported in SAE Technical Paper 2003-01-3119. What this means is that compulsive oil changers are actually causing more engine wear than the people who let their engine's oil get some age on it."

Thoughts?

Link to Article

 

filter & oil every 5k for me for the G... however i may get lazy and do 10k way down the road.

prelude was 10k (with mobile one)... honestly i should have changed the filter every
5k and the oil every 10k but oh well.

ppp

 

i change every 3 months.....which is about 3k each time

 

The combination of high rev engine and thin oil requires freqent change. When I was a kid, everyone used 10w40 oil and changed it once or twice a year with no problems. Now auto manufacturers are putting in 5w30 which is thinner and breaks down faster. If you want to decrease change intervals, use a thicker oil but beware, if anything happens the manufacturer could refuse to fix it because you didn't follow their recommendations.

 

It's overkill. Get a good synthetic oil and change the oil no more than every six months. Hell, a coworker of mine has a 997S and he changes his oil once a year. Of course he uses synthetic oil.

 

i do it every 5k miles or so. you can go 7500 miles if you're on ScheduleII.

my cooper-s running synthetic goes 12k for first oil change, 15k for next.
that's the factory maintenance requirement.

 

BTW you'll notice that there's a huge differance in the maintenance recommenedations between cars where the maintenance is included for free and for those where you have to pay for the maintenance. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the recommeneded maintenance for cars where you have to pay is a lot more robust than for those where the maintenance is free.

 

people on here have used blackstone reports to test their oil. With synthetics, 5000 miles seemed to be a good limit. It seemed though that our engines do not like long intervals between oil changes. I'm not going to do a search for you, but it is in these posts somewhere... and often. You bought a nice and expensive car, don't go cheap on the maintenance.

 

I've heard that BMWs need 10 quarts of oil (as opposed to 5 for the G) and hence the less frequent oil changes? I'm sure it's cheaper for them to replace the oil every 10-15k miles instead of every 3,750, and that's why mainenance is "free"

My question is, should the oil be changed every 3 months (if less than 3,750 miles are driven). I have only driven 800 miles since my last oil change and it's time to do it again.

 

I'm going against the general consensus here but I would not advise you to switch to synthetic and waiting 5000 miles or more to change the oil on the VQ. I know not everyone is having this problem that switches to synthetic but most people that have had the oil consumption problems used synthetic at one time or another and not changing the oil at the recommended intervals is only giving the dealerships a reason not the honor your engine warranty. I'm speaking from what I've seen and my own experience.

 

I go by the manual which is 3750. What is 750 more miles?

 

My recollection is that my M3 took six quarts of oil. The only car that I ever owned that took ten quarts of oil was my Porscche 996.

 

yup its 10

 

I bought a Lexus LS 400 in 1990 the first year that modle came out. I changed the oil evey 7,500 miles and sometimes a few Thousand over!

I traded it in @ 350,000 I used 10/40 oil and never had a problem!

I had a VW Jetta with 250,000 and a Nissan Sentra with 220,000 miles all had oil changes 10/40 at 7,500 + miles never had an engine problem!

 

Tony.. are you saying that you've seen/heard about someone not getting warranty service because they put synthetic oil or they waited a bit longer than the suggested time to change their oil?