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Comment by dboreham | Hacker News Reader

If this is interesting look at how often Americans think they have to change the oil in their vehicles. Even if said oil is synthetic.

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"think"? The manufacturer specifies the interval, and you best follow it if you'd like your warranty honored.

Most people don't follow the manufacturer's recommendation, they follow the "Jiffy Lube" recommendation which is every 3000 miles. 3000 miles is a ridiculous interval.

My manufacturer specifies 1 year or 10,000 miles. However, growing up I was told that you shouldn't go more than 3 months or 3,000 miles between oil changes.

well back in the day, say before 1990, many cars needed that because the engines were so bad. a combination of plain old poor quality and immature technology for reducing emissions . So it became a meme.

That hasn't been true since the 60's or before, when oil was very different than today's (or the 90s). We know that the 3000 or 5000 mile oil change interval is pure nonsense because the exact same engines magically have 10-20k mile oil change intervals in Europe.

Curious, have you actually read their specification? I ask because it is oven much longer than people think. The cars are configured to "warn" you that the oil needs to be changed, but the miles to change is a soft configuration that is under-provisioned (presumably due to $$ made by people selling you oil you don't need). You can ask the oil changing people (or do it yourself if sufficiently motivated) to change the interval.

My old Tacoma was 5k. My Subaru is 6k. Does that answer your question?

Volkswagen USA says my 2016 Golf should have the oil changed every 10,000 miles. 5w40 synthetic, I think.

So far I've changed it twice, every 10k. To be honest, I meant to do my own change after 1000mi as it was my first new vehicle and I figured there was no harm in doing an early first change to satisfy my concern about the supposedly-old-wives-tale of flushing out breakin materials on my first-ever new car.

To make up for my guilt at doing the bare minimum I do a Blackstone oil analysis. Great so far, but what I expect out of an engine which, at 26,000 miles, has still not done half the mileage as my previous lowest-mileage car was at purchase!

I change my oil when the car tells me to. (Which for me is only about once a year since I rarely drive more than 100 miles a week)

Unfortunately it is lying to you (it was paid to do that by the people who sell you the oil).

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