sorry, but i'll take the advice of UOA's as well as a 30+ year tribologist over "your friend who works at an oil change place". road rage, a local forum member and tribologist, knows quite a bit more than your "friend".

in case you haven'tnoticed, people who work at oil change places are usually morons when it comes to the truth about oil and its life expectancy. and no, sorry, no human on earth can "look" at an oil and go "oh its dirty" and needs to be changed.

in case you haven't realized, if your oil does NOT get dirty this is a BAD THING. why? because it means it is NOT DOING ITS JOB. oil's job is to suspend contaminants. if it's not getting dirty then something is wrong.

 

of course he would. that's what he is taught to do. they want you to change every 3000 because it makes them money.

I had a UOA done at 9000 miles on my valvoline synpower, and guess what. they said i had a couple thousand miles left. and i drive my car HARD.

everything you said is the COMPLETE OPPOSITE of what anyone who has a clue says. i'm not saying you're stupid or something. but really, please read our oil journals, and you'd be amazed what you don't know and what you can learn!!

 

Thanks for coming on our board and posting false info, that is really appreciated. Your buddy doesn't have a clue when it comes to the technical aspects of motor oil; color has nothing to do with the condition.

 

You and your friend at an oil change place understand about engine and engine maintenances better than engineers and chemists at Honda, BMW, MB ... ? For normal driving condition, conventional oil in the S does not needed to be changed until 7500 miles. For most MB cars, includes AMG models, oil change interval can be as much as 15,000 miles and similar for BMW cars.

 

Your wasting time, money, and harming the environment by changing oil this frequently. Whoever perperpetrates the 3000 mile oil change myth is a numbskull. I would follow the owner's manual recommendations for normal service for 99% of the cars out there. If using synthetic, you could actually extend intervals if desired.

The bottom line is that only an oil analysis can tell you for sure if the oil needs to be changed. And almost every oil analysis I have seen suggests 9000-12000 intervals are OK. So sticking to 7500 mile factory intervals should be fine.

Craig

 

I stock up on Mobil1 when PepBoys has it on sale once and a while.

 

Have you tried the oil recycle tank at your nearby landfill site?


Your friend is most likely acting as a ............... well ..................... a SALESMAN! Since an oil change place does this for a living, they want people to change their oil often and at the first visible sign of it getting "dirty". If he's not acting in the capacity of a "salesman", then he's ...................... well ...................... an IDIOT! Oil is supposed to "look" dirty. That's how you know it's working. It absorbs many of the by-products of combustion. These by-products (acids of sulfer, carbon, hydrogen, etc) begin to make the oil change color almost immediately. If your oil doesn't start to look dirty right away, that's when I'd be worried it's doing NOTHING.
Even with non-synthetic oil these days, oil analysis (on S2000s) at the 7500 mile interval has been proven to still have life left and this is in spite of the fact that the oil looked like black goo. You don't change oil because it "looks" dirty. You change oil because the additives have been "used up".