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Oil change

Ron Burgundy

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Thank you all, every 12 month will do just fine. I own 3 cars so I don’t use the same car every day, I do about 4000 k in each car ( or there about), I will make it 12 months regardless, unless I can just do it every 7500 even if it take 2 years between changes.

If it’s under warranty then stick with 9 months otherwise you warranty will be void...
Even if you only do 4000 km in a year the oil still degrades with time.
In your case the safest thing to do is once every 6 months...Or 9 months regardless of warranty
 

Mavericks Choice

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Been changing mine every six months cause I do fukkall K's, good quality full synth oil is best. If you like your ride keep it away from the Stealerships!!
 

stick3

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bought 2 containers of oil today to do both cars next month and all they have done since march is a couple thousand ks each
 

KING46Calais V

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I've got a 2017 LS3 stock standard. It's lucky to do 5k per year.
I've been changing oil every 6 months regardless of km.
Thinking of doing it annually due to the low k's
Should I just suck up the extra dollars as insurance against longevity or am I just draining dollars every six months?
 

panhead

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I've got a 2017 LS3 stock standard. It's lucky to do 5k per year.
I've been changing oil every 6 months regardless of km.
Thinking of doing it annually due to the low k's
Should I just suck up the extra dollars as insurance against longevity or am I just draining dollars every six months?

My cars never reach anything like 5k per year and I swap out the oil annually simply to beat the oil's ageing process.





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Skylarking

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I've got a 2017 LS3 stock standard. It's lucky to do 5k per year.
I've been changing oil every 6 months regardless of km.
Thinking of doing it annually due to the low k's
Should I just suck up the extra dollars as insurance against longevity or am I just draining dollars every six months?
There are places that will do an oil analysis so I’d talk to a company that does such and discuss the types of tests they can do and how much it costs. Interesting tests would be on contaminants, shear, viscosity, remaining additives left (probably an important one) etc.

Then if costs are not crazy, the most definitive answer would be to get the oil tested @ 6months/2500kms. If the oil test shows it’s ok, no contaminants with correct shear and viscosity and additives still within oil, leave it in the engine and then test again after another 6 months (oil now 12 months/5000kms old). Again if the oil test shows it’s ok, leave it in for another 6 months (oil now 18 month/7500kms old).

Now we get to the interesting bit, if it’s still showing as ok do you leave it in and test again at the 24 month/10000kms mark? Probably, may be not... But you’d have a definitive answer.

If you do go down this path, post test results at each step (along with driving habits) so the rest of us slackers will know the best oil change interval for our low usage vehicles :cool: we’d owe you a bear or few :p

PS: as to driving habits, if oil gets to temp and stays there for 10 minutes, I’d suspect any water and other low boiling point contaminants to boil away and exit the engine, thus keeping oil in better condition. I suspect it’s lots of short drives where oil doesn’t get up to temp that cause oil degradation and thus engine issues.
 
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Milo 6.0

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10,000km or 12 months if you do less than 10000km a year, good happy medium across the board,if driven hard,raced,tracked,much more regularly.
 

greenacc

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My cars never reach anything like 5k per year and I swap out the oil annually simply to beat the oil's ageing process.
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Oil's ageing process? I don't believe good quality oil simply gets old and doesn't work as well in anythingclose to 1 year. It's the slow build up of carbon, moisture and crap that I'd be worried about. The fastest cause of chemical ageing is heat. But I digress, I'd be doing the same and changing the oil once a year just to get that warm fuzzy feeling with a bit of just in case thrown in.
 

panhead

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Oil's ageing process? I don't believe good quality oil simply gets old and doesn't work as well in anythingclose to 1 year. It's the slow build up of carbon, moisture and crap that I'd be worried about. The fastest cause of chemical ageing is heat. But I digress, I'd be doing the same and changing the oil once a year just to get that warm fuzzy feeling with a bit of just in case thrown in.

The shelf life of motor oil is 5 years if stored between 5 degrees and 30 degrees Celsius.

Lower than 5 degrees causes sediment to accumulate and higher than 30 degrees affects its stability.

Oil in the engine of a car that isn’t driven often should be changed out twice a year as short intermittent drives do not remove the moisture content that builds up which will cause internal corrosion.

I change mine annually as that is what my father taught me after years of restoring cars and their engines.




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