This thread caught my interest. I bought a brand new 2019 Eco Sport SE (4 cylinder) I'm retired and want this to last at least 10 years....or till I die lol.....
In my last few cars, I always took it to Jiffy Lube or somewhere similar....I got lazy in my old age. The thing is, the prices they charge these days have become almost outrageous...no more $19.99 for an oil, lube and filter change.
So, I crawled under my car to see how difficult it would be if I did it on my own. The hardest part was always the oil filter. I have had cars where you can barely see it let alone change it. This one stares you right in the face as soon as you get under there. .easy peasy. Like I used to do, I did it myself and saved a chunk of money.
This thread gives me an excuse to talk about oil changes in general. I too went with full synthetic. It wasn't so much that I thought it was better, but synthetics claims they last longer. I believe it, but even they say...no matter the miles, it should still be changed once a year.
This is where things get sketchy for me. From what I have read, after 1 year the additives start to break down regardless of how many miles. I'm not saying this is not true, but may be overblown as a real reason to change your oil every year.
Now to be clear, I'm only talking about
very low millage per year.... for me, it's only about 1,500 miles. Considering that, I refuse to change it every year.
I have good reason to believe this is perfectly fine. I bought a brand new 2005 Honda Accord. For the first couple of years, I was doing about 10,000 miles and changed my oil accordingly. When I retired it went down to less than 2,000. Long story short, I drove it for 15 years. After the first two years and changing it when it was called for according to my millage....after that and when I was only driving it about 1,500 miles per year....I only changed it every three years...or every 4,500 miles
.
When I traded it in for my new Eco Sport, it used absolutely no oil, ran fine, and was getting better gas mileage than when it was new. I could have changed my oil every year despite the low mileage as the "experts" claim you should do.....but to want point? The only thing different would be I would have spent 100's of dollars more over that time. To be fair, maybe I was lucky, maybe Honda just made a superior engine, and maybe the guy that bought my used car will run into problems as it gets even older....I don't know.
I'm not recommending anyone do what I did, All I can say, it worked out fine for me.
Again, I want to be clear. I'm a believer in oil changes by miles....just not so much by time.
I'm very curious about what others may have to say about this. And don't worry, I'll be fine if you say I'm full of crap.....
