Consumer Reports says recommended 3000 mile oil change intervals are a bit of a scam - True or not?

Factual Questions
1

This list (via fark) Car care: Myths vs. reality says 300 miles intervals are really only necessary in extreme driving conditions. I used to trust CR absolutely but they made so many mistakes in computer reviews I don’t assume they are 100% correct in all things anymore.

My 2003 GMC Yukon Denali SUV manual suggests oil changes around every 3500 miles or so. Are they just playing it safe? My previous 1995 Honda had 5000 mile intervals.

One of the respondents in the comments section had this to say.

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2

Well, for one, your Yukon probably has GM’s oil life monitoring system which, IMHO, is hands-down the best idea GM has had in the past 40 years. It actually monitors the number of highway vs. city miles, the number of cold starts, etc and tells you when you actually need to change your oil so there isn’t any of the guess work that leads to these interminable discussions of oil change intervals. I don’t know why they don’t play it up more-- it can save you an enormous amount of money, especially if you’re someone who does a lot of highway driving .

For cars not so blessed, there is the interval in the manual, usually a regular which is something like 5,000 to 7,500 miles and a severe which is usually 3,000ish. Since most people have gotten wise to this and don’t buy Jiffy Lube (and others’) claims that every car needs a change every 3,000 no matter what, the more common claim these days is that practically every car meets the severe service description.

This is hogwash-- read your manual and it probably lists frequent towing, exclusively stop-and-go driving, and frequent short trips in cold weather. Chances are every motorist does one of these things once and a while, but not that many people do them frequently enough to warrant the severe service intervals.

3

A scam? Hardly. Our experience has been the opposite of GreasyJack’s in that we believe that most people do stop/go driving and frequent short trips in winter. We live in a large metropolitan area and most of our customers drive exclusively stop/go driving within a 30 mile radius.

The other reason why you should have your oil changed at the recommended intervals (and by a good shop) is that your technician should be looking at the basic systems at the same time to notify you of belt wear, hose conditions, coolant conditions, leaks, tire conditions, suspension condition, etc. By handling these things as YOUR time and budget permits, you avoid the costly tow and repair when something breaks at the most inopportune time.

4

But “short trips” means more like trips of a mile or two where the engine never has a chance to warm up all the way (ironically, the classic used car dealer’s line “an old lady who only drove it five blocks to church on Sunday” is probably the worst possible driving you can do). Most people’s commutes don’t qualify.

And the stop-and-go driving is only relevant in that if you’re, say, driving a cab downtown where you’re going to be doing a lot of driving without putting on a lot of miles. If you have a typical commute of a mile or two of stop and go followed by a bunch of miles on a freeway followed by another mile or two of stop and go, that doesn’t qualify either.

As for the last paragraph, that’s true if you’re actually taking your car to a real mechanic (which I would recommend), but most people use quick lube chains and there is not really much benefit to having some minimum wage lube jockey eyeball your car for something to sell you twice as frequently.

5

Is that some sort of honed sales pitch?

6

Changing my oil every 3,000 miles or so and using synthetic and repairing everything else mechanical as soon as it goes wrong is expensive. But over the 200,000 to 300,000 I drive the car it is a hell of a lot cheaper than buying a new used car every 50,000 miles like my dad does.

7

I agree with the consumer reports article. I’d say a lot of it has to do with the type of oil you’re using though. Cheap garbage won’t last as long as high end synthetics, etc. And to the above poster, if you’re using decent synthetics then changing it every 3000 is way overkill, quite a lot of them are made to take you to the 5000+ mark nowadays, some even to 10000 and beyond. Driving conditions can vary it, but 3000 is too often if you’re doing more than getting that $10 oil change special at the local auto shop and not offroading, idling, and driving through blizzards like crazy.

8

What’s even cheaper is changing your oil every 5,000 with whatever’s on sale and still making way past 200,000.

Furthermore… so if you get your oil changed somewhere it’s, what, $45 a pop for a synthetic oil change? So, over 50,000 miles you get 17 oil changes adding up to $765. I bought my present daily driver (which I’ve put 70k on thus far) for $650, so indeed buying a new used car every 50,000 could be cheaper than your oil change regimen!

Okay, granted a sub-$765 dollar car is not likely to go 50,000 miles without any oil changes…

9

One of the local TV station did a segment on this earlier in the air. To fill time I guess. The reporter mentioned how the 3000 miles recommendation was created when cars used leaded gasoline and how it effected the engine parts. Since leaded gasoline was no longer used, it was how the car was driven and the conditions it was driven in.

10

I’m on the moderating team for a BMW motorcycle owners discussion board. All of the bikes they’ve sold in the past 15 years (and probably even earlier) specify a 6000-mile oil change interval.

The running joke is that the cheapest thing on a BMW motorcycle is the owner: peopel are always wanting to know what maintenance shortcuts/cheap-outs they can get away with. Some are more serious about it than others. A number of folks there have sent samples of their used oil to various analysis labs (such as Blackstone); the results have consistently shown that there is a very large safety margin remaining in the oil at the 6000-mile mark, and the oil could probably go more than twice as far before one would worry about causing long-term engine damage.

It’s reasonable to believe that the same is true of cars, i.e. the factory-specified oil change interval is very conservative. The engineers who designed/developed the engine and its maintenance specs did an awful lot of testing to find out what it takes to get your engine to last for a couple hundred thousand miles. Conspiracy theorists will tell you that the mfr has carefully crafted the maintenance specs so that your engine will grenade just out of warranty and you’ll come back and buy a new car from them. But this doesn’t stand up to scrutiny: if your brand X car died a premature death, would you buy another car of the same brand?

Conversely, Jiffy Lube et DO have an interest in convincing you to change oil as frequently as possible, and it’s nothing to do with the longevity of your car. Moreover, it is laughable to think that they have any testing/development experience with any vehicle; that they claim all cars have the same need for frequent oil changes; and that their recommended interval is always considerably shorter than what your vehicle’s owner’s manual specifies.

FWIW I have sold two cars and one motorcycle, each with a healthy engine that had well over 100,000 miles on it. I changed the oil on each at 6000-mile intervals, never any engine trouble at all. Current car has over 80,000 miles, same oil change policy, engine is still rock-solid. New bike is still young - only 6000 miles on it - but I will adhere to the factory-specified oil change interval, and I’m expecting good things from it for years to come.

11

Do I agree with 3,000 mile oil change intervals for all cars in all conditions? No.
Do I agree that you never need to change the oil more often than the mfg recommends? Also no.
My car brand recommends a change every 7,500 miles which for most people is adequate. But I have seen cases (quite a few actually) where the PCV system got slugged up and had to removed and cleaned/replaced (quite a bit of a bitch to get to, between parts and labor about $750 to do) or in severe cases the piston rings get stuck when the engine is cold, and the car runs like hell and sets a check engine light due to misfire. Now you are looking at a couple of grand to fix. Usually (but not always) in these cases the 7,500 mile interval was stretched by the owner to 8,000 or more.
As I have said before, oil is cheap, engine repairs are expensive.
If you are going to go one way or the other, go to a shorter interval rather than a longer one.
Personally I go with a 5,000 mile interval. Even my addled brain can count by 5s. Why do I go with a 5K interval? I do a lot of stop and go driving. Also short hops. Maybe I am being a little over cautious but my car will still run like new when I get around to selling it.

Oh, and GreasyJack about how long it takes to warm up a car. It can take 10 miles or more of driving to get the oil up to operating temps. There is no way in hell the oil is hot in 1 or 2 miles of driving.

12

I’m an auto repair professional. I would agree that’s it’s (at least) a bit of a scam to routinely recommend 3,000 mile oil change intervals for all cars, disregarding the year/make/model of car and disregarding the owner’s driving habits.

There are several factors here. One is the type of car. While some latel-model cars do have a severe service interval of 3,000 miles, for many that recommended interval is 5,000 miles or more. Normal service intervals typically range from 6,000 to 10,000 miles, and are longer than that on some cars.

Another factor is the type of driving. Typical city driving often qualifies as severe service, while typical highway driving is normal service. However, many (most?) drivers have some combination of city and highway driving, and there are other considerations (e.g. climate) as well. The ideal approach would be to review the way a particular car is driven and determine where its use falls on the normal-to-severe service spectrum. Below are two different manufacturers’ definitions of severe service.

**Driving less than 5 miles (8 km) per trip or in freezing temperatures.
Driving less than 10 miles (16 km) per trip.
Driving in hot [over 9O°F (32°C)] conditions.
Extensive idling or long periods of stop-and-go driving.
Driving with a rooftop carrier, or driving in mountainous conditions.
Driving on muddy, dusty, or de-iced roads.

Operating in dusty, wet or muddy terrain
Frequent driving in dense city stop and go traffic
Repeated short trip operation without sufficient engine warm up
Ambient temperature extremes
Operating in mountainous/high altitude areas
Trailer towing**

Something else to consider is the continual improvement in oil. Older cars that had a shorter recommended interval may be able to safely go longer between oil changes on modern oil that is superior to what was available when those intervals were calculated. Here’s an article that addresses this.

Oil change interval recommendations are based on extensive research, but even so are somewhat arbitrary, as evidenced by the round figures given for them. If you really want to know when the oil needs changing, you can find out by having the oil analyzed by a lab – but that costs more than changing the oil. Oil life monitoring systems, while not absolutely perfect, give a much closer approximation than maintenance schedules based on “average” use and severe service descriptions with undefined terms like “extensive,” “frequent,” and “temperature extremes.” Still, for most of us the best guide is the recommended interval and a common-sense interpretation of what constitutes severe service.

I would venture that for most cars on the road today, a 3,000 mile interval is unnecessarily conservative.

13

The state of California says that 3000 Mile Oil Changes are a Myth. They also say to follow your vehicle manufacturer’s recommendation.

14

When I worked for a Japanese auto company they said the shorter intervals between oil changes is a big factor in why their cars lasted longer. They could not understand why American companies were stretching the distances. That was a few years agio.

15

This strikes me as odd because my impression was that many American cars had 5,000/3,000 miles normal/severe intervals while Japanese cars typically had 7,500/3,750 mile intervals.

16

Indeed, but usually the intake and the cylinders are warmed up to a point that the mixture can normalize. I know this as someone who has driven many an old jalopie with a manual choke.

If you do mostly driving in the 2-10 mile range, while over time that’ll build up moisture in the oil, doing a longer run here and there will evaporate it off. But if you’re doing really short runs and a large portion of your driving is done while in cold start enrichment, that’s where you get a lot of unburnt fuel in the oil and hence the need for the severe service change intervals.

17

For my 98 Civic they said 3750 but for the 08 Corolla it’s 5000. And they barely want to change the fluids in the Corolla either. Interesting the Hondas where they won’t let you change the oil early if you want to?!

18

It’s a marketing-led service interval creep that is supposed to give the customer a warm glowing feeling about the high reliability and low running costs of the new car they’ve just purchased. The standard service interval for European cars is now 10 to 12,000 miles, where 6,000 miles or so would be more appropriate. It’s a specsmanshp arms race, and we’re fool enough to fall for it.

It’s not just the service interval that can be excessively long; also the first oil change from new. Sage advice use to be to replace the oil on a new car after 300-500 miles, 1,000 miles tops. Now this figure has crept up to several thousand miles from many manufacturers. This delights the owner of my local garage, who makes a steady living from the prematurely trashed engines. On the cars he buys for himself new, the oil gets changed at 500 miles, and seeing the bits of swarf and filings that are produced even after such low mileage more than justifies his regime.

I guess there’s an auto culture difference between the US and Europe at least, in that Americans take a pride in good maintenance and auto skills, and high-mileage cars are a testament to such care and attention, whereas Europeans tend to sell on a new car after a couple of years (so engine wear is effectively someone else’s problem), and for some reason take a perverse pride in complete lack of mechanical skills. Crass generalisations of course, to which there are many exceptions, but mostly reasonable observations I think.

For the record, my '01 Citroen C5 diesel handbook recommends 10,000 mile minor intervals. I change the (synthetic) oil every 6,000 miles, and the air filter every 3,000 miles. My odo passed the 140,000 mile mark today, which is very long in the tooth for a European car. Engine build quality these days is superb (30 years ago an engine would need a complete rebuild after 50,000 miles), but the extended service intervals let them down.

19

My 2000 Toyota and my wife’s 2004 Toyota have a normal service interval of 7,500 miles. There is a 5,000 mile schedule for “Special Operating Conditions” which is defined a "if you primarily operate your vehicle under any of the following conditions:

  • driving on unpaved or dusty roads
  • towing a trailer or using a camper or car-top carrier
  • repeated trips of less than five miles in temperatures below freezing".

(note the “primarily”)

Clearly this does not apply to the vast majority of people, even though the liars at the local Toyota dealer tried to persuade me that driving in Atlanta traffic fell into the 5,000 maintenance interval definitions.

Our cars have 150,000 and 120,000 miles on them and have had no significant engine problems.

20

My Honda Civic has a little computer that tells me when to change the oil. It generally is around 5-6K, depending on what I’ve been doing.

The dealer, who of course recommends oil changes every 3K, STRONGLY recommends running the original oil for as long as possible. Actually, two different dealers said the same thing. Something about a special type of oil they put in.