Chronic Car Buyers Anonymous

Sandman6472 · 6:16AM

We do once a year since we don't put that many miles on. I usually do 3K/year while the wife, 6K/year. Since mine is more severe driving, think I'm o k where I'm at. My trips really aren't that long but that's just the way things have worked out these past 5 or so years. Might be taking it up to St. Augustine in December if the kid does buy a house. Wife is going up Monday for 6 days and their going to look & make a decision about her housing. If she does purchase, just means that we're definitely going to move so prudent that I go up and start our search for a new casa. She's concentrating on St. Augustine & South Jacksonville as she now works at a hospital in South Jacksonville. If she decides to rent for one more year, she'll just stay where she is as she's got her dog walkers all set and Stan seems to really like them. Once we do in fact move there, I'll become the new dog walker when she's at work. And in the beginning, we'll be bunking at her place until ours is ready. She's been pushing for us all to live together so that could be what happens. Depending on what kind of houses they find, it could definitely work. Share a kitchen and common area but have a separate in-law suite so we'd all have our privacy. Think that would work the best for Stan, so we shall see what they find. This all just means that I need to ramp up my purging of stuff I no longer need.

roadburner · 6:42AM

@benjaminh said:
These two popular youtube guys, who both have a lot of experience, say that engine oil should be changed at 5k/6 months for non-turbo engines and at around 3k for turbo engines. They talk about this for the first nine minutes of this video. They both admit that oil analysis seems to show that oil is often ok way past their recommendations, but then more or less dismiss that. They say frequent oil changes are not that expensive, which is more or less true, but changing at their intervals does add up over time, and for me more importantly every time I go in for an oil change at my Acura dealer I have to deal with their upsell, and filter out what's needed and what's not. Plus I do think that the Honda/Acura engineers knew what they were doing when they created their maintenance minder system, and even built in a margin or error as seen in the test above where the oil was still good in a Honda Pilot after almost 10,000 miles. The title of this specific video, which is about the unrealistic case of keeping your car for a lifetime, reveals part of how they are looking at this. My Acura is now 7.5 years old and has around 94,000 miles. I'm not sure how long I'll keep it, but there's a good chance I might try for going over 150k...I did change the trans fluid at 50k and plan to do it again the next visit, which is twice as often as Acura recommends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCQY_ci3JZI&t=2269s

Yes- let’s just dismiss any data that contradicts our 50 year old OCI philosophy.
Hacks.

@stickguy said:
From watching a lot of repair videos the big issue seems to be sludge and gunk. Not sure how the correlates to oil analysis. Meaning can it test out ok at high miles intervals but still be causing issues.

Turbos and DI seem to make the issues worse. And it’s a big problem with so many cars having oil based VVT type systems.

What’s the point of UOAs if they don’t detect factors that impact engine longevity?
All I know is that I ran the MS3 to nearly 160k miles with no issues and the X3 past 200k miles with no issues- and in both cases the UOAs were stellar. Then there’s my son’s E90 at 108k miles. It saw a minimum OCI of 15k miles using BMW TPT 5W-30- which according to the YT “experts” should have expired long ago:

jmonroe1 · 9:20AM

roadburner said:

@benjaminh said:

These two popular youtube guys, who both have a lot of experience, say that engine oil should be changed at 5k/6 months for non-turbo engines and at around 3k for turbo engines. They talk about this for the first nine minutes of this video. They both admit that oil analysis seems to show that oil is often ok way past their recommendations, but then more or less dismiss that. They say frequent oil changes are not that expensive, which is more or less true, but changing at their intervals does add up over time, and for me more importantly every time I go in for an oil change at my Acura dealer I have to deal with their upsell, and filter out what's needed and what's not. Plus I do think that the Honda/Acura engineers knew what they were doing when they created their maintenance minder system, and even built in a margin or error as seen in the test above where the oil was still good in a Honda Pilot after almost 10,000 miles. The title of this specific video, which is about the unrealistic case of keeping your car for a lifetime, reveals part of how they are looking at this. My Acura is now 7.5 years old and has around 94,000 miles. I'm not sure how long I'll keep it, but there's a good chance I might try for going over 150k...I did change the trans fluid at 50k and plan to do it again the next visit, which is twice as often as Acura recommends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCQY_ci3JZI&amp;t=2269s

Yes- let’s just dismiss any data that contradicts our 50 year old OCI philosophy.

Hacks.

@stickguy said:

From watching a lot of repair videos the big issue seems to be sludge and gunk. Not sure how the correlates to oil analysis. Meaning can it test out ok at high miles intervals but still be causing issues.

Turbos and DI seem to make the issues worse. And it’s a big problem with so many cars having oil based VVT type systems.

What’s the point of UOAs if they don’t detect factors that impact engine longevity?

All I know is that I ran the MS3 to nearly 160k miles with no issues and the X3 past 200k miles with no issues- and in both cases the UOAs were stellar. Then there’s my son’s E90 at 108k miles. It saw a minimum OCI of 15k miles using BMW TPT 5W-30- which according to the YT “experts” should have expired long ago:

——————————————————
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if I had a vested interest in selling oil, I’d recommend more frequent oil changes too. If your car needs an oil change more frequently than 7,500 miles, you have the wrong car, you’re using the wrong oil, the wrong filter or all three.

jmonroe

oldfarmer50 · 9:51AM

benjaminh said:
I recently posted the test below in the Acura thread showing that sometimes 10k oil changes seem to be ok...

There's been debate among some about whether you can trust the Honda/Acura "Oil Life" algorithm. As we know, the system keeps track of rpms, trip length, heat, mileage, etc. in saying whether the oil should still be good. Here's another oil analysis from September of 2025 that says that the Honda/Acura oil life % can be trusted. This guy has a direct-injected (but non-turbo) Honda V-6 in a 2023 Pilot, and he ran the car almost 9900 miles and 7 months until his oil life monitor was at 5%. His oil analysis from Blackstone said his oil was still performing well, and that he might even consider stretching to 11k for the next oil change. The owner of the Pilot said he was just sticking with the oil life monitor's recommendations, but the test confirmed it seems ok (at least for a non-turbo engine) to have confidence in that monitor. He was using Mobile 1. I'm just using the oil from my Acura dealer, but it is still full synthetic. Usually my oil changes are around 7k-9k intervals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4P7b7-hIHJA&t=111s

The trouble is that somebody who owns a Kia/Hyundai sees that and decides 11k miles is good for them too.

oldfarmer50 · 10:10AM

jmonroe1 said:

roadburner said:

@benjaminh said:

These two popular youtube guys, who both have a lot of experience, say that engine oil should be changed at 5k/6 months for non-turbo engines and at around 3k for turbo engines. They talk about this for the first nine minutes of this video. They both admit that oil analysis seems to show that oil is often ok way past their recommendations, but then more or less dismiss that. They say frequent oil changes are not that expensive, which is more or less true, but changing at their intervals does add up over time, and for me more importantly every time I go in for an oil change at my Acura dealer I have to deal with their upsell, and filter out what's needed and what's not. Plus I do think that the Honda/Acura engineers knew what they were doing when they created their maintenance minder system, and even built in a margin or error as seen in the test above where the oil was still good in a Honda Pilot after almost 10,000 miles. The title of this specific video, which is about the unrealistic case of keeping your car for a lifetime, reveals part of how they are looking at this. My Acura is now 7.5 years old and has around 94,000 miles. I'm not sure how long I'll keep it, but there's a good chance I might try for going over 150k...I did change the trans fluid at 50k and plan to do it again the next visit, which is twice as often as Acura recommends.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCQY_ci3JZI&amp;t=2269s

Yes- let’s just dismiss any data that contradicts our 50 year old OCI philosophy.

Hacks.

@stickguy said:

From watching a lot of repair videos the big issue seems to be sludge and gunk. Not sure how the correlates to oil analysis. Meaning can it test out ok at high miles intervals but still be causing issues.

Turbos and DI seem to make the issues worse. And it’s a big problem with so many cars having oil based VVT type systems.

What’s the point of UOAs if they don’t detect factors that impact engine longevity?

All I know is that I ran the MS3 to nearly 160k miles with no issues and the X3 past 200k miles with no issues- and in both cases the UOAs were stellar. Then there’s my son’s E90 at 108k miles. It saw a minimum OCI of 15k miles using BMW TPT 5W-30- which according to the YT “experts” should have expired long ago:

——————————————————
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, if I had a vested interest in selling oil, I’d recommend more frequent oil changes too. If your car needs an oil change more frequently than 7,500 miles, you have the wrong car, you’re using the wrong oil, the wrong filter or all three.

jmonroe

There’s something to say for the peace of mind that more frequent OCI gives you. Yes you can send out for oil analysis instead of changing the oil but I wonder if it wouldn’t be cheaper to just change the oil on a set schedule of 5k miles.

Personally, I’d feel better knowing I did the change rather than staying awake at night wondering is some dreaded wear gremlin was out in the driveway chewing it’s way through my engine.

steine13 · 10:11AM

kyfdx said:
YouTube guys are definitely the guys I'd pick, rather than engineers that actually design the engine manufacturer..

That sounds logical, but let's talk about the "lifetime fluid" automatic transmissions that were peddled some years back, and maybe still are today.

There is significant pressure from the marketing department to advertise low maintenance costs and long intervals. I'm changing my transmission fluid, thank you very much.

The "youtube" part aside, mechanics see the the real-world mayhem that can come from old oil in certain use cases. Manufacturers do all sorts of testing but can't really replicate customers like me who run their engines cold winter after winter because of a short commute. An oil life monitor might catch that, but my 21 Impreza doesn't have one. And it has 6k intervals from the mothership, synthetic.

My 17 Grand Caravan has a 10k OCI but after I learned about valvetrain failure and lifter tick on the Pentastar 3.6, I went to 6k intervals. It's cheap and I do it myself. So far it's been the most reliable car I've ever owned -- at 155k miles.

cheers -mathias

xwesx · 11:52AM

oldfarmer50 said:

There’s something to say for the peace of mind that more frequent OCI gives you. Yes you can send out for oil analysis instead of changing the oil but I wonder if it wouldn’t be cheaper to just change the oil on a set schedule of 5k miles.

Personally, I’d feel better knowing I did the change rather than staying awake at night wondering is some dreaded wear gremlin was out in the driveway chewing it’s way through my engine.

That is not the point of the UOA. I mean, yes, you can zero in on a "correct" interval for your use case, but the peace of mind that the UOA provides is to detect potential problems before they become terminal ones. And, that is true peace of mind .... something that more frequent oil changes cannot provide.

As an example, I would have had no idea that I had a coolant leak issue on my Q7, probably to this day, were it not for UOA. And, at this point, it probably would have been going on long enough to be causing real damage to the engine. As it was, the analysis was able to detect an anomaly basically as soon as it started (within the year, anyway), which meant I had the opportunity to find and address the problem while it was still superficial - no damage done!

I can easily justify the cost of the UOA by *also* running longer intervals, because, for me, UOA is $40 while an oil change is about $60-$100 (depending on the vehicle), but that doesn't mean it is a given or necessary association. Plus, only doing oil changes during AMW is a wonderful quality-of-life improvement over watching the odometer for a specific target and then changing it... likely in the cold, laying on my back on the snowpack....

tifighter · 11:54AM

I guess they do know what they’re doing.

xwesx · 11:57AM

steine13 said:

kyfdx said:
YouTube guys are definitely the guys I'd pick, rather than engineers that actually design the engine manufacturer..
That sounds logical, but let's talk about the "lifetime fluid" automatic transmissions that were peddled some years back, and maybe still are today.

There is significant pressure from the marketing department to advertise low maintenance costs and long intervals. I'm changing my transmission fluid, thank you very much.

The "youtube" part aside, mechanics see the the real-world mayhem that can come from old oil in certain use cases. Manufacturers do all sorts of testing but can't really replicate customers like me who run their engines cold winter after winter because of a short commute. An oil life monitor might catch that, but my 21 Impreza doesn't have one. And it has 6k intervals from the mothership, synthetic.

My 17 Grand Caravan has a 10k OCI but after I learned about valvetrain failure and lifter tick on the Pentastar 3.6, I went to 6k intervals. It's cheap and I do it myself. So far it's been the most reliable car I've ever owned -- at 155k miles.

cheers -mathias

Amen to that! When using the "correct" fluids, a 6k interval is absolutely safe for any vehicle. Period. The end. 10K? Often, but not always. And, if an issue does develop during that timeline that results in the ability to visually detect it, it will take a lot longer with a longer interval.

I like having all of my vehicles on the same interval, so if I were doing it based on distance, I would likely just set a "safe" range for all the vehicles and just do them all at that time; way easier to track!

jmonroe1 · 1:41PM

steine13 said:

kyfdx said:
YouTube guys are definitely the guys I'd pick, rather than engineers that actually design the engine manufacturer..
That sounds logical, but let's talk about the "lifetime fluid" automatic transmissions that were peddled some years back, and maybe still are today.

There is significant pressure from the marketing department to advertise low maintenance costs and long intervals. I'm changing my transmission fluid, thank you very much.

The "youtube" part aside, mechanics see the the real-world mayhem that can come from old oil in certain use cases. Manufacturers do all sorts of testing but can't really replicate customers like me who run their engines cold winter after winter because of a short commute. An oil life monitor might catch that, but my 21 Impreza doesn't have one. And it has 6k intervals from the mothership, synthetic.

My 17 Grand Caravan has a 10k OCI but after I learned about valvetrain failure and lifter tick on the Pentastar 3.6, I went to 6k intervals. It's cheap and I do it myself. So far it's been the most reliable car I've ever owned -- at 155k miles.

cheers -mathias

——————————————————
I think I told this story before but I’m not sure.

Back in the early 70s, changing your oil at 3K miles was not unheard of. Oil was not what it is today so I followed that guideline religiously. At the time, I was driving a 68 Olds Delta 88 Custom with a 455 CID V8.

I worked with several guys that did their own car maintenance and stuff around the house too. We were young and starting out in our careers and liked to save money by being DIYers. It wasn’t unusual for us to talk on Friday about what we planned to do that weekend. Then talk about how it went on Monday. It just so happened I planned to do an oil change on Saturday and I mentioned that I was a couple hundred miles under 3K miles but I was going to do it anyway. Most of the guys gave me one of those looks and said, “isn’t that a little early even for you”? I agreed but it was going to
be a nice Spring day so I figured why not get an early start on the new season.

So on Saturday morning at about 8;30 I’m getting ready to jump into the stack of pancakes Mrs. j made for me when we hear a knock on the door. We gave each other a surprised look and Mrs. j said she would see who it was. She looks out the living room window, returns and says, “that looks like Ed Wilson, the guy you work with and he has something in his hand”. I’m thinking what could he be doing here, he said he was going to get in an early round of golf before doing some yard work. Anyway, I go to the door and sure enough, it’s Ed and he has a Prestone anti freeze jug in his hand. I said, “what happened, did you spring a leak on your way to the course (he had to pass my house on the way to the golf course) and you want some water”? He replied, “nope, I want your drain oil.” Wise axx.

I don’t know why but I invited him in for a pancake breakfast. I don’t think guys today talk about their weekend plans like we did, especially with WFH being so prevalent today. Yep, those were the good old days.

jmonroe

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