wrote
That's a mark of a true professional. Unfortunately, too many service writers at dealerships and shops try to sell all sorts of service that is questionable. Their compensation package is tied to sales dollars.
I'd like to see the manual that doesn't have a sever recommendation.
Steven (SMS) has been at this for years. Fetish of his. Deeper psych problem than the simple habit of doing 3k oil changes. I'm not in the penny-wise, pound foolish camp. I'm in the 3k cheap insurance camp. Change my own oil. When I was in an apartment for a while I went to a quick change. Except for my 3k rule, schedules are meaningless to me. Once, sometimes twice a year I drive 1200 miles to Florida. Then for 2-3 weeks it's all short trips to get bait or groceries. Then 1200 miles back. Do I subtract the 2400 miles highway driving? Nope. Why complicate things?
In most cases damage because of long oil change interval is hard to prove or disprove. Toyota burned itself by having a 7k interval in their manual. Lots of sludged engines. But it happened to some who did 3k changes too. Design flaw.
Steven seems to be a basically honest guy. I hope he would mention to a private buyer of his Toyota that he uses the long oil change schedule. But he probably trades for another Toyota at the dealer before any problems show up. Plenty of the Toyota owners with sludged engines had bought used cars at Toyota.
I've only bought for myself and cars for my kids. All used Chevys, an Olds and a Pontiac since 1975. Only one guy had maintenance records. Didn't mean anything to me. I always just pull the filler cap for a sludge check, and never found serious sludging. You'll get some sludging on older engines. Never had an internal engine problem since a 350 rod knock 30 years ago. Even 3k oil changes didn't prevent that. Got plenty of use out of it before the rod knocked. But I paid $900-3500 for these cars, and since I stick to GM, know how the engines and transmissions are supposed to sound and act. Only car I would ever recommend to non-family who asked me - usually a girl or woman - is a new Corolla/Prizm. Safe bet I thought. Now I wouldn't even do that, but nobody asks me anyway. Even my kids just go out and plunk down $30k for a new SUV. I can't understand it.
Pretty much the same with me.
--Vic
The engineers at the manufacturer of my car tell me to rely on their oil monitoring system. That system tells me to change at around 7000 miles. My driving includes some of the iteme on the "severe service" list.
Oh, it's just peachy to ignore your owner's manual. Got it.
But yopu'd never get away with straight 30 year round where I live
----. Gotta run a minimum 10W30 spread - I usually run 10W40 winter and 20W50 summer except the PT which has run it's whole life on Synthetic
I was straight salary, and all my men were straight time - no "incentives" - and the shop was busy enough I didn't need to go looking for work. A 115% +/- retention rate will do that for you.
With 600 vehicles in the "active " files, being seen 3 times a year, just the regular scheduled service is 1800 work orders a year - or 7 customers per day. That was about the lowest volume we did over the 10 years - when I left there were over 900 vehicles in the "active" file
- so 2700 work orders - or 10 customers per day.
Add tires, brakes, clutches, oil leaks, exhausts, sticky door handles, electrical problems etc, plus all the off-brand customers and the used car lot and I kept my guys busy.
Only happened to the 3k guys if it took a year to put on the 3k or they were using the cheapest oil they could find.
Neither of my cars have the oil monitor, so I follow the schedule (more or less). Daughter's Honda asked for oil change at under 8000km (7200, I think) which is under 5000 miles. And that was the monitor.
Actually, it COULD. You need to know what caused the oil consumption. Synthetic oils are less prone to oxidation, and also to boil-off. Also less likely to coke up the rings.
Changing the oil at 3000 miles, in many cases (not Saturn specific) can mean NO oil consumption, while leaving the engine untill 5000 miles may mean half a quart of oil used - and by 8000 miles more than a quart.
And the Saturn is definitely not the only engine with a hydraulically operated timing chain tensioner. The 2600 MitsuShitty had about 6 feet of timing chain and balance shaft drive chains - all of which were hydraulically tensioned. Without proper oil change intervals the chains and tensioners didn't last well at all.
The Toyota 18R, and more so the 20R and 22R series engines had the same issues. So did the M series engines - long oil change intervals meant noisy timing chains. And broken tensioners. Adequate oil changes TOTALLY eliminated those issues on the Toyotas as well.
Oil deposits - VARNISH and SLUDGE kill engines. Slowly, and steadily, a bit at a time.
Yes, some engines (particular models) WILL survive abysmall maintenance and severe abuse - but even some of those particular engines WILL succum to poor maintenance.And the occaisional example of a "fragile" engine will also survive, in spite of abuse and neglect.
In YOUR opinion. If the extra oil changes eliminate the sludge/coke failures, they are NOT being changed far more often than "necessary"
No, it's not my opinion. When the whole sludge thing happened Toyota stated that it was the result of drivers that should have followed the severe service oil change interval (5000 miles) following the normal oil change interval (7500 miles). They thought it too confusing to have the two service schedules so they rolled everything back to 5000 miles.
No argument there. But it's still a far cry from the days of lower quality oils when 3000 miles was the norm.
Different oils. You can read up on it.
--Vic
They had a nightmare of sludged engines due to - bad PCV or head design - not sure which if not both. That's why they went backwards. Nothing to do with the "severe" service schedule per se. That's what happens when you play with intervals and the unexpected occurs. Clare says 3000 mile changes would prevent this. I don't follow Toyota, so i don't know. But there are marketing reasons to take chances with longer intervals, just as there are for the 3k change standard.
--Vic
Not surprising, there are certainly many other mechanics who have performed similar unnecessary repairs and diagnoses.
and Idle time
Like I said before - it's NOT better oils - it's less agressive fuels and better mixture control - which allows what ammounts to a POORER oil to do an adequate job. To be more accurate, a slightly DIFFERENT oil - better in some ways, inferior in others.
Hmm, most of Europe uses km, not mi - are you sure you're not mixing up units? I used to do oil changes around 6000mi in England (on my modern vehicles - I still did my vintage ones at 3000mi) - which isn't too different from 10,000km.
That's still higher than the US, of course, but only twice as much :-)
Historically, I think the US was reluctant to change tried-and-tested engine designs, at a time where much of the rest of the world was aiming for better efficiency and power to weight ratios. That gap seems to have closed these days, but perhaps there's a lot of inertia left in the system - 3000mi changes used to be the norm in the US, so that's what's still advised even though modern engines don't need it.
(My brother in law's a GM mechanic, incidentally, and I know he quotes
3000mi - I'll try and remember to ask him why next time I see him :-) cheersJules
In the US, for better or worse, pollution controls have trumped efficiency.
So you know better than the engineers who designed the engine?
Your brother is a mechanic, yet you know better than he. What, exactly, are your qualifications?
The main reason oil change intervals are longer in Europe is the OEM's take part in oil "design." Of course longer changes is a marketing tool also.
--Vic
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