Posted on 09/17/2010 12:02:53 PM PDT by Vigilanteman
I STILL remember learning from my father how to carefully remove a dipstick to check the oil level in our cars. It was drilled into me — along with turning off the lights when you left a room and clearing the plates off the table after dinner — that oil needs to be changed every 3,000 miles or so.
Kieron Kohlmann changing the oil in a 2007 Dodge Charger in Union Grove, Wis. Changing the oil every 3,000 miles is no longer a good guideline for cars bought in the last seven or eight years, says Philip Reed of the car site Edmunds.com.
I’m not sure what I thought would happen if I didn’t, but I vaguely imagined an unlubricated engine grinding to a halt.
Childhood habits are hard to undo, and that’s often good. To this day, I hate seeing an empty room with the lights on.
But sometimes, we need to throw aside our parents’ good advice. In March, for example, I wrote about how we should relearn the dishwasher and laundry soap habits we inherited from our mothers.
Add frequent oil-changing to that list.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
As a minimum interval, maybe. Consider they sell cars. If they last forever, they only sell to the new drivers and replace wrecked ones.
You are correct. My bad.
All of my stuff every 5000. Rotate tires too. Easy to watch on the odometer and I never have had an engine fail or even use oil.
Seems to match your test.
Way back in 1968 I talked to a salesman who traveled over fifty thousand miles a year, he was driving an American Motors Ambassador with a V-8. He said he would only drive American Motors cars and he swore that he NEVER changed oil, just changed the filter regularly and added a quart to replace the oil lost when changing the filter and any other time when the dipstick dropped to the add mark. He claimed to be driving his cars 200,000 miles before trading. He had some crazy theory that new oil was no good for an engine.
I have long known that highway miles are much less wearing on an engine than city driving and that is probably what saved this guy from blowing an engine every six months.
It is true that tires were very short lived in the fifties, generally speaking. Strangely though, my father bought a new F-1 Ford pickup in 1951 and ran the rear tires that came on the truck just past FIFTY thousand miles. No one had ever heard of such a thing. They were Dayton tires. It was probably twenty plus years before I ever saw another set of tires go that long and they were radials.
I have no idea why those two tires lasted that long but I know it happened, the front tires held up well but they didn’t last nearly as long as the rear tires, that is not unusual. I don’t think the tires were ever rotated on the truck, that just wasn’t something that was commonly done back then.
My son in law drives a 72 Nash Ambasssaror with a warmed over V/8 and 5 spoke “mags”. I call it a Nash to piss him off. He is a 25+ year journeyman auto mechanic and has some other “unusual” cars like his Dads completely stock 1932 Ford 5 window coupe with the original 4 banger in it. His Dad bought it the 50s. His Dad drives a stock 1935 Ford 4 door that he restored a couple of years ago...
Engine replacement is expensive. Oil/filter changes are not. Do it.
Well, I sold a 93 S10 that had 175000 miles on it, and it’s going strong still. As is the 95 K1500 Z71 (that sat for 2 years) with 165000 miles.
I drive about 2500 a month, for work and whatever playtime I get. My brand new 06 GMC Canyon (bought July 07) had 70000 in May of this year when it got squished by a dump truck. Get the 100000 mile warranty, and follow the manual, you’ll be fine for at least that many miles.
As far as oil life, both the GMCF and the Ford have sensors to check the oil, and tell the driver when it’ss time to change.
What bothedrr(s me is why have the computer readout say ‘Driver door is ajar’ when it’s the same letters to say ‘Driver door is open’.
It’s a door - it’s not ajar.
And, if the makers built a car that would last forever, they’d still sell cars.
Human nature takes over after 5 to 10 years, and wants the new shiny car with all the cool features.
My ‘daily driver’ is a ‘75 chevrolet van, with a 350 V8 I and a friend built 120,000 miles ago. (297,000 on the chassis)
The last engine slipped the timing chain coming down the switchbacks into Vernal, Utah, and it was a long drive home to North Dakota after I replaced the timing set on an oil drilling location.
If I want a computer in there, I put it in a case and load it up. If the door is open, I notice and close it. I have gauges for the rest. It’s basic, not even power steering, and I like being able to fix what goes wrong with very little in the way of parts or spares. (Creative engineering still works on most of the old ones, unlike the computer models.)
From the mouth of a Ford engineer(my hubby), read your owners manual.
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