Simviation Forums

The car that I am currently insured to drive on is usually quite oil-happy, and it only gets looked at during its annual MOT test. That would roughly relate to 12000-15000 miles a year.

I know my father's car is slightly less friendly and requires top-ups every so often. But once again, it gets looked at as part of its annual service and MOT. I suppose that's one of the major benefits of the test; as a driver, the problems are gradual and you may not notice them... To a mechanic who is testing your vehicle for safety and reliability, any issues become obvious.

The car that I am currently insured to drive on is usually quite oil-happy, and it only gets looked at during its annual MOT test.

The car that I am currently insured to drive on is usually quite oil-happy, and it only gets looked at during its annual MOT test.

Checking/changing engine oil is not part of the MoT test. Unless you have the car serviced or do it yourself it will not be checked.

In my old BMW, I changed oil and oil filter every 5000Km on average, and the only reason the engine left me around 200.000Km is that it was an old one, born to be used with 98 octanes leaded gasoline but used in a world of green 95 octanes green gasoline. :-/

I learned how NOT to do it from my father, who, on the other hand, bought a FIAT 127 in 1977 and for the ten years that followed NEVER changed its oil not filter (when asked he said he did it, ONCE, but I suspect he is lying, and even if he actually DID, that one time is hardly enough), only adding fresher oil (and of a bad quality too) when its level dropped, and the poor car's engine gave up the ghost before 120.000Km total.

I always knew that's always a good idea to plan regular oil's and filter's change intervals because the "black oil" gets this coloring by its own exhaustion and microscopic impurities that aren't blocked by the filter and cannot be healthy for the mechanical parts, and looking at my father's old blunder only reinforced my conviction.

My BMW (3L diesel) has the all singing, all dancing oil monitoring system. It lifes the oil after servicing at 30,000 km. This comes down depending on how hard you drive and the acidity in the oil to name couple of the many analysis points . I also have to have fully synthetic oil and seven litres of it, so the longer I can hold on to it the better $$$$$$.

I think at the end of the day, as long as you do what the manufacturer says should be done, then you should have no worries. Also bearing in mind outside of a few diehards who will always try to push a car's life to the max, the average life of a car in Europe is 11 years and around 160,000 miles before it is scrapped, it really does not matter what you put in to it as it will be recycled long before it is even close to being worn out. Which them brings a new question. Do we really need all this technology and electronic monitoring, not to mention gadgets for something that has such a short life span??

Matt

Oil change for me every 4-5k miles with full synthetic 0w-40 Mobil1. I've seen too many customer cars all sludged up, so I like to keep fresh oil in there. May cost a little more, but Im ok with that!

Oil change for me every 4-5k miles with full synthetic 0w-40 Mobil1. I've seen too many customer cars all sludged up, so I like to keep fresh oil in there. May cost a little more, but Im ok with that!

If you are going to change fully synthetic oil every 4-5k miles, can you box it up and send it to me. I will happily put another 25k miles on to it for you............and save a huge amount of money at the same time

Matt