Hey guys was wondering how often you change your oil I’ve been romping around on mine pretty hard so what do you guys think?
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Oil changes
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Can't really go by looking at oil stains on a piece of paper towel.
The car should have an oil life monitor. Or you can change the oil at a fixed number of miles. Or if you do not drive the car that much every 6 months.
For my usage I found 5K miles to be a good trade off between keeping the engine full of "fresh" oil and yet "getting my money's worth" out of the oil. But remember in the engine and engine oil partnership the oil is the sacrificial item.
Call me excessive but I do mine every 2500. Amsoil Oil and Filter
there is absolutely no reason what so ever under normal driving conditions to change oil more often than every 6,000 miles, which is too often.. Oil contamination is caused by "blow by" on the rings--the darkening of oil is the caused from by products of the combustion chamber, not metallic wear. you can change it more often under heavy race conditions or if you are a very hard daily driver, but even then it is questionable.
modern day injected engines get very little excess blow by, due to the efficiency of injection and the great design in rings and combustion chambers currently--thereby hardly any oil contamination.. in the 60's and 70's when carbs drowned the engines with fuel and when flooding was common, you had to change frequently to keep from knocking out bearings because raw gas and excessive blow by reduced viscosity and would wash out the main and rod bearings.. further with synthetics, the oil life in most engines now is 15,000 at a minimum.
waste money if you want to..
good luck with your decision.
modern day injected engines get very little excess blow by, due to the efficiency of injection and the great design in rings and combustion chambers currently--thereby hardly any oil contamination.. in the 60's and 70's when carbs drowned the engines with fuel and when flooding was common, you had to change frequently to keep from knocking out bearings because raw gas and excessive blow by reduced viscosity and would wash out the main and rod bearings.. further with synthetics, the oil life in most engines now is 15,000 at a minimum.
waste money if you want to..
good luck with your decision.
You can't or at least shouldn't make a blanket statement regarding oil change frequency.
Turbo charged/super charged engines are "notorious" for contaminating the oil with blow by.
This under "normal" driving conditions. The Hellcat supercharger is over driven and generates boost even if the boost gauge doesn't switch from In/Hg to PSI. With another car just driving on the freeway at legal speed often when encountering an up grade the boost gauge would indicate the some boost in the 0.2 to 0.3 bar range.
I had one car maker that called for 15K mile oil changes. I had the oil analyzed at 4K miles. Analysis found 7% water content in the oil. With over 9 quarts of oil capacity that was close to 1/2 quart of water. No coolant leak just the result of driving the car in the dead of winter and even though I avoided short trips more investigation found the coolant temperature remained quite low even at 75mph on the freeway. This kept the oil temperature down and it didn't get hot enough to boil the water out. I changed the oil right after the oil analysis and every 5K miles thereafter. The engine was still fine when I sold the car with 317K miles on it.
My Hellcat's coolant and oil temperatures stayed rather on the cool side unless I ventured onto suburban or city streets.
The flip side is with a number of my cars I have changed the oil just prior to going on a long road trip then upon arriving home a week or so later and with 5K miles on the oil changing the oil and noting the oil still had some amber color to it.
More recently with my 2020 M-B cargo van, with its turbo charged engine -- I didn't change the oil after I got back from a long road trip but I had the oil I wiped off the dipstick to go by. With 4K miles on the oil it still looked might fresh on the paper towel.
It is clear if my normal driving consisted of mainly highway miles 6K, 7.5K even perhaps 10K miles between oil changes would be ok.
In yet another case while the automaker nominally called for 10K mile oil/filter services the dealer service department had a bulletin posted in which the factory declared the region to be a severe duty region due to climate (heat/humidity, dust, and traffic congestion) and cut the 10K mile oil service interval in half to 5K miles.
Well we just disagree--my experience is based on servicing literally millions of cars and trucks coast to coast. I stand by my comments--and having oil analyzed is a waste of time and money as well. Water in oil is nothing new, but to suggest that your personal experience is the norm is not enough data and not applicable--my experience in the industry coast to coast, is literally based on "millions" of services and dealing with manufacturers and petroleum companies as well.
Amber color in oil is normal. Bearing material in oil is a different matter and would be from catastrophic mechanical failure--3,000 mile oil changes vs 10,000 mile intervals would make no difference in mechanical failures--it's a falsehood to believe that more frequent oil changes prevents catastrophic failures.
The petroleum companies advertise frequent need for oil changes--I wonder why....
Gents and Ladies, your sequential port fuel injected engines run extremely lean and are highly clean and efficient. In fact most of the idle lope you feel in your HellCat, is actually lean run misfire and fuel only drenches the cylinders on "wide open throttle and even then is set up to still be as lean as possible for efficiencies. Spend extra money if you want to on extra oil changes, but it's a scam..
I could not disagree more.. my experience is based on literally "millions" of services coast to coast with manufacturers and petroleum companies as well due to my manufacturer relationships and having managed automotive brands all across America.
Your personal experience is limited data and does not apply to the general conversation--it's strictly your experience.
Mechanical failures cannot be prevented by 3-5,000 oil change intervals vs 10-15,000 mile intervals.
Also, todays turbos and superchargers are totally different in design than the "goat roper" turbos we dealt with in the early days.
Ladies and Gents, you can blow money on frequent oil changes if you want to, but it's a waste of time and money.
The petroleum companies have brain washed people to short intervals--I wonder why??...
@1MileShooter Listen no ones doubting your data and research and quite frankly I learned something new from what you said. Its just that these motors burn about a quart of oil every 2k miles anyways so instead of adding a quart I just do the oil around 2.5 to 3k. Its not like its 500 dollars to do the oil its, around 100 with filter. Also, at the shop I workout I have seen multiple cases of lifter failure on hemis because of the lack of oil. Bad lifter = a bad cam = metalshavings = tear down the motor. Easiest way to prevent this is having people check/ change their oil more frequently.
Finally, someone agrees with me about catch cans!!!!!! 😁 I wait until I get around 5%, OR if I'll be gone a while on the road.
Do you drive it hard though?
Usually gentle with the occasional romp. For roasting them and going nuts I usually use the 69 for that. Purpose built.
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