Same here. I've never had a car die of engine failure.
Engine oil
- Thread starter fixitflav
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Same here. I've never had a car die of engine failure.
It's all about marketing, kid perspective buyers (that don't know any better) that their new toy has long service intervals
To be fair, I think some of the really top quality "long life" synthetic oils can actually do their job for a lot longer, without anything bad happening. However, they need a modern engine that can control its fueling very accurately and has been machined to much closer tolerances than were possible years ago. I think Delco developed an oil quality sensor that doubled as a level sensor, but neither the vehicle manufacturers nor the oil companies wanted it.
Correct oil is vital for a lot of modern diesels. Not the just the weight but the manufacturer spec.
Your manual should say what the manufacturer specifically recommends.
I've recently been servicing an old petrol ford Ka myself. Managed to get 5 litres of castrol magnatec for £26. Manual for the car says Ford WSS-M2C913-A or B - but ford confirmed that their latest Ford WSS-M2C913-C/D is backwards compatible with all previous formulations.
Regarding diesels, I have also come to the conclusion that if you are driving your modern diesel for mostly short journeys, you need to change your oil much earlier to reduce the soot content that is more likely to accumulate quicker from short journey use.
My 6 year old diesel has had oil changes every 4000 miles. Lots of short trips, never a DPF issue, exhaust is also spotless inside and out.
Your manual should say what the manufacturer specifically recommends.
I've recently been servicing an old petrol ford Ka myself. Managed to get 5 litres of castrol magnatec for £26. Manual for the car says Ford WSS-M2C913-A or B - but ford confirmed that their latest Ford WSS-M2C913-C/D is backwards compatible with all previous formulations.
Regarding diesels, I have also come to the conclusion that if you are driving your modern diesel for mostly short journeys, you need to change your oil much earlier to reduce the soot content that is more likely to accumulate quicker from short journey use.
My 6 year old diesel has had oil changes every 4000 miles. Lots of short trips, never a DPF issue, exhaust is also spotless inside and out.
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My M45 has never done much more than low annual mileages, 125K miles, never short trips - they are carefully avoided, and it usually only gets used in summer. I do the oil changes, usually based on mileage, never more than 2kmiles, which is often every second summer. I usually buy the cheapest oil, I can buy, in 20/25L containers, so long as it is a known name, and meets or exceeds the BMW spec. for the oil.
My wife's Suzuki uses 0w-20 engine oil and now I notice there is a development in the 0w-20 market with "Innovative energy-saving premium bi-synthetic engine oil (PAO + esters) for modern gasoline engines. Designed to meet the requirements of American, Japanese and Korean automakers" on the market from Mannol. Can anyone advise what these esters do to the oil?
It's a minefield of marketing and things that you can deep dive into to the point of them being meaningless for the everyday person. Interesting if you like that thing, but overkill in terms of practical information.
The key thing is you get the oil that 1) meets the correct weight, 1a) meets the manufacturer spec for your engine.
All other considerations after those two might depend on how you drive the car or conditions you drive the car in.
If you want to deep dive into it all this guy has a very informative site and seems to be unbiased.
The Motor Oil Geek
As a Certified Lubrication Specialist with over 20 years experience, The Motor Oil Geek channel delivers real data about motor oils from an expert perspective instead of speculation. Twice each month I will upload a new video that either analyzes a new oil, dyno tests an oil, reveals the details...
www.youtube.com
also https://www.youtube.com/@EngineeringExplained does a few deep dives on engine oils (although he does it through the lens of testing with a specific manufacturer of oil).
The handbooks usually specify shorter service intervals for engines used in "arduous conditions". One of those is often lots of cold starts and short runs, or prolonged periods of idling. I think, as much as anything, it's because the oil never gets hot enough, for long enough to evaporate the unburned fuel off, that gets past the rings during cold start enrichment? Also on diesels with DPFs, lots of short runs will mean more "active" regenerations, which often tend to dump a fair bit of fuel into the oil.
When I bought and rebuilt a Lotus Cortina, it came with the handbook. It used 20w/50 oil and the recommended oil change interval was…….every 2,500 miles!
I had one of those, the mark I. The model where the inner wings would part company with the outer wings, in common with all the mark I's, I ended up bracing it, with a bar across the top of the engine.
