how often should I change the oil

nasridine

I have a 2010 foreester. How often should the regular oil change be done? I thought it was 3 mon/3000 miles. Today the customer service told me it is 7500 miles for any Subaru. I am confused. Which one is right?

xwesx

The factory schedule calls for 3750 for "severe duty" and 7500 for "normal duty."

Unless you are in a severe climate, are doing extensive city driving, or are working the car hard, you can likely run the 7500 schedule without a problem. However, for the first change, I would not go any longer than about three thousand.

ateixeira

If you use synthetic I say go with 7500 miles. I bet at 3750 you're draining perfectly good oil.

xwesx

For synthetic, agreed.

Regardless of type, I still wouldn't put that many miles on the first oil.

Just for an example, I put 2500 miles on my car's (2010 Forester) initial oil change, which was accumulated over a weekend (driving it home from Seattle), then switched out the oil and put in synthetic. I put a little under 12,000 on that oil, doing two used oil analyses just to check the condition. After the first analysis, done at 10,000 miles, the break-in wear metals (such as silicon) were fairly high. Between the first and second analyses (second one done 4,000 miles later), the change in level on those metals was virtually nil. So, that tells me that it took more than 2,500 but less than 10,000 miles to "break in" the engine. I did not analyze the conventional oil that came out at 2,500, but I strongly suspect the wear metals would have been much higher than in either of the UOA I had performed on the subsequent oil.

I will do another analysis on the current oil in a couple of months. It has about 5,000 miles on it right now, changed at something like 14,000 miles in July.