I have what I would consider excellent winter storage conditions, so I think I'm on the right path here.
Once a year for me with oil that’s made for my vintage engine. Mostly in town driving and never more than 1200 miles in any year. Same with my wife’s 2015 Honda Civic 19K miles in 10 years. Once a year with a catch can added.
I do mine once a year because I know it'll get done. If I were to skip a year because of not enough mileage, I would get all out of sync and perhaps miss multiple years.
Just wondering........how often do professional over the road semis change their oil? Yes, I know they are diesels, but diesels are "dirtier" than even older gasoline engines which operate dirtier than the newer automotive gasoline engines...............so whats a general rule of thumb for changing oil in them?
I used to run Freightliners and Internationals. Seem to recall 20k. My memory has taken some hits the last ten years. So I checked, and found Cummins looking for 30 thou. There were during my time on, the hi-ways, increases due to better oils and better filters. To give a perspective I would aim for driving 3,000 miles a week. BT W remember that gasoline is a solvent. Diesel fuel is oil. Another thought about the span is that many trucks aren't shutdown. No break, or heat cycle. The mention of Diesel being dirty refers to the combustion particulate emissions not the crankcase. Since I'm already off the track, ( thank you @ekimneirbo ), I'll toss out this factoid. Diesel discovered the property of combusting oil through molecular friction with a pipe about 6? feet tall. He'd put some oil in and shove an airtight plug into it. The result of squeezing the oil hard enough, resulted in an explosion. He then named it "The Oil Smasher". Later came the pistons, crankshaft, rods etc.
Lets not forget that diesel motors generally have a lot more quarts of oil in them then car motors do. Ten quarts of oil can handle 2x the amount of contaminates and moisture that 5 quarts can. I have seen the issues that long term 5,000 mile oil change intervals, without any time concerns, have caused inside of motors, and its not pretty. The motors may still run, but there is a lot more wear in motors that do not get timely oil changes. If you are not putting a lot of miles per year on your vehicle, at least change the oil and filters at the same time, every year. Get the motor thoroughly warmed up, and drain the oil while its still warm, so it pulls the accumulated contaminates out of the motor mixed with the oil you are draining. Then change the oil filter before you add the fresh oil.
My flathead (like it's owner) doesn't have a filter so I change it every winter. My Olds has a 10 quart pan (left over from racing days) and I can only afford to change it every other year. The rear main leak assures it gets a fresh quart now and then. The hemi in the PU hasn't been driven enough to worry about it (tranny issue they aint identified yet).
More oil in say a big cam Cummins, 11? Gallons as I recall, which adds to your reply. Maybe 11qts is vehicle diesel?
The 10 quarts compared to 5 quarts was to show how much difference more oil can make in any contaminate or moisture situation. I don't play with diesel stuff much, but I believe most modern diesel pickups have at lease an extra couple of quarts of oil.
A prior owner of my wagon left me this mess from not changing oil frequently enough. The only problem with changing oil too often is cost.
The typical 11 L or 12 L heavy duty diesel engine has between 38 and 40 quart oil capacity with filters.
Gene are you saying that problem was time related and not necessarily mileage related. Should I change my extended life 20,000 mile oil and filter at 5000 miles like I originally did? It takes about 4 to 6 months to get 10,000 miles.When I extended my changes to 10,000 mile intervals the oil was a little darker but still looked and smelled OK. Dan
Notice the use of plural term filterS. Over the road rigs and other heavy equipment frequently have a "bypass" filter in addition to a full flow system. This will filter out smaller particles than a full flow system and gives a "belt and suspenders" approach to keeping the oil clean.
Since I live in Montana and we get this thing called winter here, I change mine in all my "classics" at the beginning of car season every year. In my daily driver old stuff, it's every 2000-2500 miles, and I'll do that on the "good cars" on the rare occasion I put that many miles on them during car season.
When you are driving you car and adding on miles rather quickly, the higher miles on an oil change generally do not present a problem as long as the oil doesn't break down. The issue is, you are never really sure if the oil is starting to break down. I had a car that I beat the crap out of for 200,000 miles before the car died (the motor still ran great). I had changed the oil every 3,000 miles (because i was beating it so badly). When the car died, I pulled the motor apart. It showed a lot of cylinder wear, but other wise, everything else looked pretty good. I also had a second version of the same car, with the same motor that my wife was driving, the car got driven over 25,000 miles every year, I did the oil change every 10,000 miles. We put over 200,000 miles on that motor. I had to do an internal repair (don't remember what it was anymore), but as I pulled the motor apart I was surprised how badly several of the oil protected parts were really worn. The cylinder bores looked good, but the cam, rod and main bearings, and the crank looked a lot worse then the same parts in the 200,000 mile car I was beating, but changed the oil on every 3,000 miles. We do have to keep the perspective that both motors had survived 200,000 miles, but the differences in the wear of the oil protected parts between the two motors was astonishing. Along the same lines, there are people that believe they only need to change their oil when it gets that 3,000 - 5,000 miles on it, even if they only put 1,000 miles a year on their car. They think that an oil change every 3-5 years is OK. Those motors are sledged up junk in 50,000 miles. To me, an oil change is required once a year in a car that doesn't get driven more then 3,000 miles a year, if the motor runs long enough to get completely warmed up nearly every time the car gets driven, or twice a year if it never gets warmed up. If the motor sees more then 3,000 miles a year, it needs to have the oil changed every 3,000 if the motor doesn't completely warmed up nearly every time its driven, or every 5,000 miles if it does get warmed up nearly every time its driven. I don't trust any oil to not to start breaking down by the time it has over 5,000 miles on it. But that is me, you do you.
Gene, 3000 miles is overkill, but 10k miles is letting it go too long. 5000-7500 seems to be the sweet spot with modern engines and modern oils. Like you said, they both lasted 200k miles. The thing is, when we're talking about "hamb" cars, very few of them will ever see 50k miles in their lifetime, so it really doesn't matter if they get a little wear, eh? Have fun...I don't worry too much about making my engines last forever, I'll settle for 100k miles on the old ones, no sweat.
My driver only gets driven about 6k a year and street driven projects only get driven 2 to 4K per year so everything gets one change a year but I swap filters out once on the projects. Oh yeah I use full synthetic oil in all of them and I drive ten miles to the nearest town every time I fire them up, very little short trips.
Short trips, conventional oil and sitting far to long will contribute the conditions in the photo also.
Bumped into a buddy yesterday who mentioned that he just purchased a new 2025 Toyota RAV plug-in hybrid. He was saying he can get 75 kms on just the battery alone. Issue was some warning light came on so he had it towed to the dealership. They told him that there were 4 oil sensors and it had detected some moisture in the oil. He said oil had a white colour to it. They told him he needed to use the engine more often, so now he uses the engine once a week on the highway to get it working harder/longer at operating temp. So, could make sense like others have also mentioned, that infrequent use can be more detrimental than anything else.
That does not look like engine sweat but more like old crankcase fumes. Long term rings and valves blow by.
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