How many of you owners change your oil before or in between the scheduled services.Do you think it's necessary or is the synthetic oil nowadays that good.Feed back is appreciated.

 

I am from the old school so I changed my oil @ 5K and changed it again on the scheduled 10K mark.

 

Every one has their own opinion. Some people think it's overkill. I consider regular maintenance. To each his own.....

Here's my story:

For the 1st 10,000 miles, I changed every 3333.33 miles. After that I do that every 5000 miles. If you do more city type stop-and-go driving, you should change more often than every 10K. The oil is some what black when my tech dump it out. Also the dinky little oil filters are not that great either and I don't think they hold up for 10K miles.

 

leadfoot - You have asked a question that there are as many answers as their are people willing to post on this thread. Here is my take on the issue.

For some first hand experience. On the VW Vortex Forum there are people that put 100s of thousands of miles on their VR6 motors and use synthetic oil and change the oil every 10,000 miles. When it is time for a valve job or timing chain assembly maintenance and they pull the motor down they find a motor with no sludge, inside surfaces of the motor that are not coked up, cylinder bores that are not scuffed, camshaft lobes that are not worn, and crankshaft bearings that are in perfectly good shape.

Now you take the recommended oil & filter change schedule on my 2002 BMW 540i wagon at 15,000 miles and I feel, given the VW VR6 experiences above, that Synthetic Oil actually performs like the Auto and Oil Mfg. claims it does, so I don't worry even at a 15,000 mile interval. All those that change their oil sooner than the recommended intervals are doing so based on a "feeling" that more is better and not actual fact.

For all those that do change their oil at lesser intervals than recommended, I can appreciate your desire to maintain your auto to the highest level possible but for all practical purposes you are spending money for peace of mind founded on the "More is Better" syndrome and not on actual facts.

However, if you were going to change the oil at lesser intervals, the first 1,000 miles of the motor,s life would be the time to do it and I would do it three times. One at 150 miles one at 400 miles and one at 1,000 miles. During this period the highest probability of oil contamination will occure due to the friction surfaces developing a wear pattern.

As far as oil filter size goes, I would think that filter efficiency would be a higher priority than size, and if enough contaminants where caught in the filter to actually fill it, something is very wrong in the motor for this to happen. The size of the filter is determined by the volume of oil needed by the motor and the oil change interval. So enough filter material is designed into the filter to allow the oil to be filtered (a relatively slow process) but still provide the oil volume the motor needs and also catch the "Normal " contaminants over the oil change interval.

So I say change the oil & filter as recommended by the Auto Mfg.. Synthetic oil is an extremely tough lubricant and the "old School" knowledge does not apply to it. I know old habits are hard to break but you have to have faith in the new technology. The Auto Mfg. Do and they have bet their Warranty Budget and Co. profitability on it. - - Bob

 

I changed mine at 1000 miles.I have no plans on changing it again til the recommended servicing.

It was for piece of mind after spending $90k on a car I plan to keep for some time.The $150 I spent let me fall asleep at night without worrying about microscopic pieces of metal floating around the engine for another 9,000 miles

Had I leased it,I'd have waited til the wrench popped up

 

I'm on the side of the old school, and I think that oil is cheap insurance, even Mobil One.

A big concern is the life of the filter. They now have the fleece filter that shouldn't break down, but I'm still going to do the 5,000 or so changes.

That's just me though.

 

The "oil change every 3000 miles" mentality might have be great back when Nixon was the president and conventional oil was the lubricant of choice but lubricant technology has evolved so much over the last decade that I think changing your synthetic oil every 3-5K miles is an overkill. Synthetic oil contains a much higher quality base oil as well as superior synthetic additives to combat thermal breakdown, corrosive byproducts, viscosity breakdown, oil burnt off etc...versus conventional oil. I don't think MB would spend millions of dollars on R&D and ended up recommending changing your oil every 10K for no reason. Just my .02

 

But I'm REALLY wierd...

 

I change my Mobil 1 in my turbo Audi every 2500 miles
But I'm REALLY wierd...

Either that or you must have stock in Mobil 1.

 

And why would I care about your Audi when this is a Mercedes forum?

 

I changed at:

1,500
5,000
10,000
15,000
20,000

 

OUCH!
Wheres da love....

 

For those that change before the mfr recommendation, send your oil out for analysis. That will tell you exactly what's going on and if you could have waited.

It's only $20 from Blackstone Labs.