When do you change your oil? Do you wait till the oil life is at a point of needing a change or do you do it a 5000 miles. I am at 4500 miles with 47% life left. What would you do?

 

I do one year or 10,000 miles whichever is sooner. You car runs synthetic oil and is made to run 10,000 mile or longer in some cases.

 

I always wait for the oil life monitor to count down to zero. A lot of work went into that monitoring system, you should trust it, as it definitely works. I get my oil analyzed every time I change it (it's a fun hobby of mine) and it has proven to me time and time again that the oil life monitor can be trusted.

 

Around 2%, any less and it starts complaining on the DIC.

I'm getting around 8K per change based on my driving.

 

I'll second that as long as you run a good filter. If you had a good enough filtration system you could run your oil forever.

 

I do mine once/year which is aprox 5k miles.
How long has it been since your last change?

 

Really in a one year period I only have 4500 miles or so by then.

 

I change mine once a year since I do not drive it enough to have the oil life monitor tell me it is time. I wouldn't have any problems changing the oil when the oil life monitor indicated it was time if I drove it more.

 

On my AE I change every 5000 miles, usually that is about 7 to 8 months. On everything else I drive, I go 10,000 miles due to the much shorter time to get there.

Mobil 1 is great, and along with normal maintenance, 300,000 miles on an engine is very possible. I put 250,000 on my 98 Jimmy at a 10,000 mile service interval, and much of that was towing a 5000lb boat.

My boat, motorhome, 09 Altima, 07 4Runner and the AE all get a steady diet of Mobil 1, and I extend the service interval on all but the AE....again NOT my daily-driver.

 

I run it below 10%,,,but that means I change my oil about 2 or three times a year!!! I just LOVE driving this car!!!!

 

I do once a year, but I only drive it about 3500 mi per year.

 

At 10% or so I guess.

 

This one comes up regularly here and is one of the issues that polarizes opinions. You'll get plenty of members who are old school and change the oil every 3000 miles.

A lot of work went into designing the oil life monitor and it really is a complex algorithm. With the quality of modern synthetic oil I believe that its safe to follow it. Those members who have had their oil analyzed find that it has plenty of life left at 100% use. The factors used in the calculation are starts, cold starts, oil temp over time, rpm, mileage, engine coolant temp, load, knock sensor feed.

FWIW as mines no longer a DD it hits a year between changes. In Vegas I was changing it at about 5% on the DIC. Oil is way more expensive in UK and a typical oil change costs about $90 in oil alone. Wasting that kind of money by ditching good oil is not an option even ignoring the green issues.

You might be interested in this in order to form an opinion.

"Oil Life Monitoring Courtesy E-T

Here is how the OLM system works.

Mileage has little to do with how oil is monitored, here is the idea:

Car 1:
If you drive 90% of the time on the highway lets say 1500 rpm an hour.
you engine sees 90,000 revolutions in that hour and you drive 60 miles.


Car 2:
If you drive around town, profiling with 90% of your driving in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd gear, taking 4,000 rpm on average. That's 240,000 revolutions of the engine in 1 hour and you only drive 30 miles.

Taking this out to 3 months , 90 days:
Car#1 3,600,000 rpms and 5400 miles

Car#2 21,600,00 rpms and 2700 miles

This represents 1 hour of driving a day for 90 days.
Car #2 sees 6 times the engine duty of car #1 and Only half the mileage


So you can see that mileage can be very misleading....."




GM OIL LIFE SYSTEM...HOW DOES IT REALLY WORK ?

From the May 2003 GM Techlink publication

How often should engine oil be changed? 3,000 miles, 5,000 miles, 7,500 miles, 10,000 miles? Actually, all of these are correct, depending on operating conditions. Oil life is affected by many factors other than just miles driven. The type of driving, temperature, and engine load all play a part.

That’s why GM has developed the GM Oil Life System, an electronic watchdog that keeps track of all these variables and notifies the driver when it’s time to change oil. This system has become standard equipment on nearly all GM products since 2000.

Briefly, the Oil Life System is programmed with a certain number of engine revolutions. As the engine runs, this number is reduced until it reaches zero, and the Oil Life light or message comes on. But there’s more. Operating the engine under low or high temperatures, and under high load conditions subtracts (penalizes) extra revolutions, so the light comes on sooner. Changing engine oil according to actual need rather than an inflexible schedule provides several benefits. First is simplified determination about when to change oil. No more decisions about normal conditions vs. severe conditions. Second are reduced operating costs for GM’s customers, who now have to change oil only when it’s needed. Third is minimizing the amount of used oil that must be disposed of. And fourth, engines will always be running with sufficiently fresh oil, for long life.

Traditionally, the vehicle maintenance schedule has been based on miles or time, while the oil change interval is now based on the GM Oil Life System.

When the change engine oil light or message comes on, it means that service is required on the vehicle. It should be serviced as soon as possible within the next 600 miles. It is possible that, under the best conditions, the engine oil life system may not indicate that vehicle service is necessary for over a year. However, engine oil and filter must be changed at least once per year, and at this time the system must be reset.

 

I've been changing the oil in my 2004 coupe, every 2,000 miles.
Change your oil as you want, it's your car and your money.

 

I do it by mileage and usually around 4000-5000 miles

I am set to do my oil change this weekend with ENEOS 5W 40 Full Synthetic (Usually use Mobile 1)

Thanks,Matt