Oil filter change in old car - how often?

[David]

Maybe the electrode wear on the plug.

[Clive George]

Yes, I had a 1275 in a Metro and a Maestro. The latter one was actually pretty good - 130K miles with no grief and still working well.

(My sister then got the car, and a similar one at the same time via her boyfriend's mum. Mine was dented, hammerited, had done 130K, the other one had less than half the miles and was still shiny. She mistook shiny for capable and retired mine (to banger racing IIRC), then discovered that a car which has been pottering round the shops all its life ends up with no performance.)

[The Other Mike]

It might be for the latest engines but there is no such thing as an oil that can be universally applied by virtue of it being 'the highest spec'

If it is designated as suitable for modern engines then It will almost certainly have very low levels of Zinc dialkyldithiophosphate and is thus totally useless for the cam and cam followers interface on a great many vehicles particularly those built prior to 1990's Indeed there are vehicles sold less than 5 years ago in the UK that can't cope with low ZDDP oils.

[The Other Mike]

There are places that fix them or just buy a new one - they only cost two or three times the price of a good runabout :)

[The Other Mike]

In the UK it generally used to be imperial gallons then 5 litres, except Mobil 1 which was in 4 litres until the late 90's when they moved to sell in both 4 and 5 litre packs.

Can't recall seeing any 1 gallon or 4.5 litres packs recently - I usually buy Mobil 1 (5L), Halfords synthetic (5L) or Castrol Magnatec (4L) depending on the vehicle.

[The Other Mike]

It was as near as dammit the same engine! That 12k servicing move imho was a marketing decision, not one necessarily based on engineering.

Apart from the external ribbing on the crankcase fundamentally the mechanicals were near identical to the earlier engines. They rolled the fillet on the crank journals to improve fatigue life, and iirc finished them a bit better.

The distributor changed to allow longer intervals before the points needed adjusting (sliding point contacts) The crank damper got bigger and there was minor work on the valve seats and combustion chamber shape, carbs changed to integral float chamber SU's, plus a bit of work on the crankcase ventilation. There was some other change, I can't recall exactly what, on the cam drive - maybe the tensioner, or getting rid of the rubber inserts on the chainwheels. The tappet covers were also deleted to reduce oil leaks.

The biggest problem for any lubricant was on those with the transverse engine when gears in the box mashed up the engine oil. Most burnt the oil such that what was in the sump at 12k miles wasn't what was in the sump at the last service :)

[The Other Mike]

Can you recall which model?

Speaking of 60's Honda's

[The Natural Philosopher]

I honestly think that the change to service interval was about marketing and better oils in the 70's.

The Germans and Japs had these service intervals and BL was forced to follow their lead.

A whole BL car was pretty fecked at 70k miles anyway. And Ford weren't any better.

[Martin Bonner]

ROFLMAO. Detroit Diesel Corporation (customer in my previous job), has made plenty of engines with a million miles on the clock.

It's true that _most_ of their customers decided that the the major engine rebuild required at 700,000 miles wasn't worth it in light of the value of the rest of the truck, but 250,000 miles isn't much more than "run in".

[Davey]

I was thinking more of all the little ones, such as light controls and system monitoring. Any one of these dies, and your car might not be dead, but it will be maimed.

[Doctor Drivel]

I do know fantasy when I see it.

[Doctor Drivel]

He would have to change the air filters as it would not pass the MOT emissions test. Also it must have sounded like a can of nails. If it ever occurred of course.

[Doctor Drivel]

It is the highest ASPI spec. If your car fist the viscosity range then it is suitable.

What engines?

[The Natural Philosopher]

"at least"

rebuilding an engine properly is effectively setting the clock back to zero.

I know that the smaller diesel VANS are not good for much over 250k as they are in general 'car engines' detuned a bit But proper truck engines are better than that.

So that's a good data point if '700k before major rebuild' is trade standard...

[The Natural Philosopher]

well grab a pic programmer, and some chips and make your own :-)

In fact they ARE repairable

Silly FIL left the windows and sunroof open on the car and all the windows stopped working; I stripped out the board cleaned all the corrosion and applied switch cleaner...result!

[Doctor Drivel]

Actually since about 2004 Mobil 1 is no longer a true fully synthetic. Mobil lost a test case against Castrol re Magnatec which was claimed to be fully synthetic when it was in fact a hydrocracked Group IV mineral oil. The use of hydrocracking paraffin etc into engine oil makes a boost to profit from utilisation of lower grade stocks. As a result Mobil themselves moved to it, so basically synthetic can mean "true" polyolefin etc or blend of cracked mineral oils.

There is a true synthetic still available - Miller, however I think it is about £65-69 for 4L. There comes a point when you are better off changing a cheaper oil more often due to water & fuel contamination and additive depletion.

[Doctor Drivel]

>>>>>>>

Why?

[Doctor Drivel]

Actually since about 2004 Mobil 1 is no longer a true fully synthetic.

[Doctor Drivel]

longest Popular Science Article ever. In 1976 a Ford Lube expert ran his car for 100,000 miles on fully synthetic oil "after" pounding it in the Fords oil tests. They have improved a hell of lot since and the price has dropped to not much more than mineral oils. "mineral oils are as antiquated as the Model T"

Here is the article. It reads left page to right page. Covers both pages. Starts top of 90 and over over to 91 and back to 90.

they are on about the top quality synthetic oils like Mobil 1.

[Tony Bryer]

Yes, read the books (copies of most of them on my shelves) about BMC/BL in the late 1960s and 1970s and weep. IIRC there's one account of B-series engine machinists using cigarette paper to keep the machine tools within tolerance.

You can only look back and think 'if only': if only they'd been able to build the Triumph Dolomite and Rover SD1 to Japanese build and reliability standards.