My 2008 G35 has 4,400 miles on it. I've had it for 6 months, so I'm only averaging about 9,000 miles per year. I'm going going to take the car in for (at least) an oil change. Since I put relatively few miles on the car, I'm not sure which maintenance schedule to use. Schedule 1 service for 7,500 miles or 6 months seems like overkill since the car only has 4,400 miles. I do take some short trips, so schedule 2 maintenance may not be aggressive enough. Does it make sense to follow Schedule 1, but to do the service based on mileage (vs. months of ownership)? This would still be more aggressive than Schedule 2.

Any advice would be appreciated. I want to make sure that I do enough (and that my warranty remains valid), but do not want to do unnecessary work.

 

I've had the car for nearly one year and it's only at 4,600. LOL. I haven't gotten maintenance done on it yet although it's had an oil change at 1000. Now I think I should go by time instead.

 

depends man, how long you planning to keep your car.

if you baby your car change your oil every 3 months. oil viscosity is a function of temperature, hot and cold weather do a number on it. nice to swap it out.

technically you can get away with every 5000.
If you're using synthetic oil, by all means, go 5000. if you're using conventional i say no more than 3500.

cause i mean our engines work pretty hard. last thing you need is friction at those high rpms.

 

I think I understand your dilemma. Going off of what you said, I would do the maintenance off of the months (time). Even though you may have not driven your car enough miles to justify an oil change, the oil itself breaks down over a certain amount of time and will not lubricate your engine as effectively as it should. Brake fluild for example absorbs moisture over time and needs to be replaced regardless of how often it's used or not used. I know it sucks to change fluids regularly even though you don't drive that often, but your car will return the favor by lasting a long time.

 

If you do the simple stuff yourself, you can easily afford time-based schedule 1 maintenance (parts and fluids are relatively cheap). But if you rely on the dealer, time-based maintenance (driving only 9k miles/year) will get expensive. The laid-back way is to use the dealer for mileage-based 15k interval schedule 1 service, and get yourself local oil changes every 3-6 months in between. My guess is that the dealer won't even bring up time-based maintenance.

 

Thanks for the advice everyone. I think I'm going to follow Schedule 1 maintenance based on mileage, but get more frequent oil changes (probably every 3 months).