By definition insurance is a waste of money. You have to lose to win. Better than 90% of insurance policy owners never collect - and those who do seldom recoup their "investment" When your time is worth money, and you use your car for work, maintaining the car to a higher than "necessary" standard only makes sense (if not cents). You get to chose when the car is off the road, where, and how much you spend.
The idea of insurance is to pool money together to pay for things that too big to pay for individually, like replacing a car after a crash or theft, rebuilding a house after it burns down, running a household after a bread-winner's heart stops pumping, etc.
Yet it has not been shown that "higher" standards will have any benefit at all. And they have a downside, like cost, waste of time, increased risk of having dirty oil until the leaks in the filter media are plugged, etc.
In theory.
Jeff
I spent better than 25 years in the auto repair business, a large part of it at dealerships. Brother still in the business. Neglected cars make mechanics a WHOLE LOT more money than maintained cars - even counting the maintenance. It is MUCH cheaper to prevent damage than to repair it, and NEGLECT CAUSES DAMAGE. I wish I still had access to the records from the dealership to show you. Over a 3 to 5 year period, the cars I saw 4 times a year cost the owners about half what those I saw less than twice a year cost. In the 5-7 year picture, WAY less than half - and yes, we saw a fairly good number of 5-7 year old cars back TO THE DEALER for service 4 times a year.
It's a waste of money. We drive lots of vehicles to over 250K and send them to auction running like the day the left the factory and that's with 6000 mile oil changes. These are driven all over the state, some regularly off road out in the boonies. There simply is ZERO evidence that more often oil changes provide ANY benefit whatsoever.
Achieving the *same* result for half the cost is CHEAPER insurance. So compared to a 3000 mile change interval, a 6000 mile interval is CHEAPER insurance then the cheap insurance.
You do sound like someone with a lot of years on them. So I'm guessing your experience was a long time ago... a time when a 3000 mile change interval actually made sense since cars ran rich, emission controls were non-existent, gas was full of lead that fouled the plugs and oil, some people were still using non-detergent oil, etc, etc. Times have changed. Buggywhips and gas lanterns are no longer mainstream needs, nor are 3000 mile oil changes.
you DO. If the sliders stick (which many do) your brake performance and life goes down the tubes.
I just changed the pads on my 99GT. 50,0000 miles on the originals. All wore the same, nice and evenly. I never lubed any of the pins during that time.
Why don't you change it every 1000 miles? You should buy as much cheap insurance as you can get. Since there is no advantage to 3000 mile oil changes versus 6000 mile changes, there is equally no advantage to 3000 mile changes versus 1000 mile changes, so you'll get the same benefit, and waste even more money, which appears to be your goal.
My experience is just over a decade old. My brother is still in the business, and I see what happens to engines all the time that are "neglected". And the "neglect" falls into what you guys are advocating as "acceptable" There's not a month goes by there isn't at least one engine replaced because someone was too cheap to "waste oil" on "un-necessary" oil changes. He makes more money replacing or repairing engines than changing oil, but he'd rather not have to present the resulting bills to those who are too cheap to give it to him a little at a time.
If you are claiming 6000 miles cause problems your claim is hogwash unless this is a Toyota dealership seeing a lot of those poorly designed Toyota v6's. For those, even a 3000 mile interval may not be often enough.
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