Oil change?

Until last month I had two road vehicles in a similar position (have just traded one in) and I was doing oil changes every 2 or 3 years. Experts will tell you the regular oil change reduces water content, oil oxidation, additive depletion. But lubrication is one of my specialisms: my reasoning is that obsolescence and (perhaps) rust are life limiting for those particular vehicles, rather than engine wear. For something like a tractor or a standby generator where you might hope to get another 30 years of useful life, the strategy would be different. (Which reminds me, ought to do an oil change on the tractor).

If they were all decent length journeys where the engine gets fully hot AND the oil is good quality then leave it another year, personally I would change it anyway at 3k. The cost of oil and filter once a year is very low on the scheme of things nowadays.

They are all short runs, the oil is decent quality and is still that funny clean colour. However, aye, I'll have it changed. Thanks newshound and Mr C.

I'd check again what the maker's recommend. On my BMW, it's by the service indicator or every two years if it's not done enough miles. But that does assume you're using oil to the actual maker's spec.

Yeah, it's every 8k miles or 12 months which ever comes first. I dunno what sort of oil my mechanic uses but it will be decent stuff. I've always been dubious about the makers recommendations. I've known many fleet vehicles to go 10k + miles over the service and be okay, plus these vehicles get hammered down the motorway 5 days per week.

long runs are far kinder to the oil than short journeys, even if they are flat out.

A work colleague bought a nearly-new Fiat some years ago. After a couple of years, he thought it should be serviced, but was horrified by the cost.

When he left the company some years later it had around 65k on the clock, and had still never been touched from new. No oil or plug change, nothing. It still started and ran perfectly, and consumed no more oil than when he first had it.

The question is 'do you feel lucky?'

Chris

Difficult to hammer any modern car given the speed limit. So motorway cruising is probably the kindest to an engine. Much more so than start stop traffic and short journeys.

And, of course, fleets replace their cars long before they are near worn out.

Oh, I wouldn't say that. Modern TDIs are often a ticking time-bomb when fleet managers dispose of them!

I suppose those are the ones that are ticking time bombs whether they're fleet owned or not, really.

(Ex-rep 320d, bought at 3.5yrs, 127k, now at 10yrs, 197k, and still on original turbo, injectors, clutch & battery ;-) )

They're a bit more fragile and complicated these days.

The whole advent of high pressure Diesels seems to have gone through cyclical phases of good and bad in, what, 15 years of being mainstream. I mentioned mine as one from a year earlier would be prone to munching turbos at regular intervals or swallowing swirl flaps. Go forward a year or two and leaky injectors became a problem.

VW, from my limited knowledge, seems to have done similar.

My petrol turbo needs fully synth which can be expensive. My philosophy is the that it's better to use cheapo supermarked synth with short change intervals, eh.. 4000-5000, rather than expensive brand name and long intervals. But I'm open to other views.

So having to change discs as well as pads saves them money how?

All they thought of was a van being off the road due to a sensor warning light. We all know that there is a bit left on the pads. They would wait until the pads began to scrape on the rivets, then have them changed.

If they think pads have rivets it explains a lot.

I think they did in 2001?

I have never come across rivetted pads on anything, shoes yes, years ago. As to the disc thing, 9 times out of ten nowadays it is best to replace discs and pads together.