Extended oil change intervals can save you money and time but they definitely help the environment too.
Your car will generate 2 or 3 less used oil filters a year and possibly 10 to 15 quarts of used oil - depending on your oil change interval. You'll need a high quality oil and filter - some argue the filter is more important than the oil but they are both important when extending OCIs.

The issue is how comfortable you are extending your OCI while under warranty - I've yet to hear someone who maintains their vehicle have a lubrication problem by extending their OCI carefully with used oil analysis and common sense.

Texas, Florida, Yukon etc. The oil suggestions from the manufacturer are tied to the ambient temperatures in the location you live - there is a chart in your owners manual. You'll be fine with 5W-20 in NYC. The hotter the outside temperature the thinner the oil will be at operating temperatures inside the engine (move up to a 5W-30). The colder it is outside the thicker oils do not lubricate as well during cold morning start-ups in the frozen north (stick with an 5W-20 or 0W-20).

The days of having to change oil viscosity based on the seasons are gone thanks to the multi-weight oils - the number with the W in front of it is for 'Winter'. The second number is the oil weight at operating temperature in the engine.


Who else is thinking of extending their oil change intervals or already does and what is your plan?

I'm going to start in the spring of 2012 extending to 12,000-km/6-month intervals on AMSOIL - Extended Life 5W-20 Synthetic Motor Oil (XLM) using a standard Wix or Mitsubishi filter until my 5 year warranty expires and then go to 24,000-km/1-year interval on AMSOIL - Signature Series 5W-20 Synthetic Motor Oil (ALM) using an AMSOIL Ea Oil Filters - Nanofiber Technology

UOA's will be done to verify that everything is good instead of blindly accepting the service life recommendations. I'll post them - but the first one probably won't be until next fall as I've got some other oil to use up first.

 

I change my oil every 7500 miles (as per the regular schedule). Being from Europe where everyone generally follows "regular" maintenance schedules and by and large experience no problems, I have to say I do not buy the "Every day to day car in the USA should follow the "severe" schedule" argument at all. In my time I've ran up a few 100k+ mile engines, and never had one pop because I didn't change the oil every 3k.

 

This also sheds some light on extending oil changing intervals. Here is some pretty interesting information.
https://mitsubishiforum.com/forum/mi...light=analysis

 

Thanks for the link Greg, very interesting. As mentioned, I've not done anything nearly as scientific as that...but my best example was my high mileage eurospec 1996 BMW M3 I had when I was stationed in Germany. That car was over 100,000 miles (with a good amount of sustained high speed autobahn abuse for the time I owned it!!) - and with that I only changed the oil when the BMW service indicator said it was time for a service....usually around 8-9000 miles. Always used a high quality synthetic; always took the time to thoroughly warm the car up before thrashing it. Sold it at around 120,000 miles and the engine was just as capable as when I bought it at 60k - it never did miss a beat.