How often do you change your car oil?

BMW's have been on variable servicing for over 10 years now and despite the many things that can and do go wrong with old BMW's major engine issues on the longlife serviced petrol sixes are very very rare. It doesnt seem to have affected them?

Perhaps its the requirement for LL01 approved synthetic oils?
 
I do mine when my car tells me to, but then again I don't often keep cars for more than a year or so anyway, so I rarely worry about it. My bad :(
 
I do my DC2 every 3000 miles + filter, works out at 1p per mile and 15 minutes of my time. The guy who owned it before me did it every 2000 miles!
 
i do normally less than 8,000 a year so once a year.

A mate of mine who owns a garage does it for £20 with decent oil and it would cost me more than that for the oil and filter doing it myself...
 
paradigm said:
When the car asks for it.
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How often are you topping up?

Had my first top up yesterday, though unsure of whether it's been topped up since its new oil 5k miles ago, Audi put long life oil in at last service.

I'll probably stick some fresh oil in about 3k miles or so.
 
bledd. said:
I do my DC2 every 3000 miles + filter, works out at 1p per mile and 15 minutes of my time. The guy who owned it before me did it every 2000 miles!
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What!

You must love sitting up in sky high RPMs or only do 3k a year.

Wouldn't say there is a need unless tracking or leaving the car sitting around for a long time, Honda's 6k recommendation is fine and will save you ~£40-50 in comparison.
 
MikeHiow said:
You'd love to think so, but if Engineer says - 10k mile services gives an average lifespan of around 200k miles. Marketing say - how long would it last with 20k mile services? 100k on average - good, job done.

I think you'd have to be a fool to think that the Engineers recommendation on optimal oil changes makes it directly into the service schedule.
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That's not really what happens at all.

The car manufacturer will put in a request to the oil supplier for an oil that meets specific specifications they have chosen for the engine in question. One of those may be that the oil must last for a certain length of time under specific tests/conditions.
So basically the oil is designed around the requirements of the engine, with the idea of being changed when its properties have changed to a certain extent. It's not designed around making the engine reliable up to a certain mileage (of course engine wear is a concern, but that's taken care of in the specification).
 
DAnDan said:
That's not really what happens at all.

The car manufacturer will put in a request to the oil supplier for an oil that meets specific specifications they have chosen for the engine in question. One of those may be that the oil must last for a certain length of time under specific tests/conditions.
So basically the oil is designed around the requirements of the engine, with the idea of being changed when its properties have changed to a certain extent. It's not designed around making the engine reliable up to a certain mileage (of course engine wear is a concern, but that's taken care of in the specification).
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but what about those fellas who have done oil analysis repeatedly to find that even oils like mobile 1 dont have much more to give after 7k miles
 
Once a year, although the amount it needs topping up every other month means it has fairly new oil in it all the time :p
 
I've always done it very 10k on the cars ive owned so far, i do a fair bit of millage 20k+ a year so the car has a nice easy time of it for the most part so i don't see any need to be spending money changing twice as often before the oil is saturated with contaminants and hasn't started to breakdown and lose any of its properties.

But as my scooby has just by promoted to the role of weekend toy i'll probably only be covering something like 3k in that from now on so the oil changes will either be annually or perhaps sooner if its being abused with lots of track work.
 
Lets think about this, i'm sure the likes of Mobile and Castrol would like nothing more than to sell more oil, means they make more money, so if the product is total pants and doesn't last much past 7k would they allow us to change it less often?

I'm sure the garages would like nothing more than to get us to service our cars more regularly, means they make more money, so why are they insisting that we do it less frequently?

Think i'll trust the engineers and researchers at the oil company’s, engineers and engine bench testers at the engine development departments over anyone else.

I would LOVE for Simon to have his say on this but i'm not sure he's going to bother, which is a real shame.
 
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