Changing Engine Oil- Who to trust?
Margaret Bourke-White, Getty Images
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"Read the manufacturer's recommendation" That is what everyone says. But is it true? Are the manufacturers looking after your interest or their own, to sell more product? The oil companies, not surprisingly, suggest changing your oil every 3,000 miles "for maximum protection." The car manufacturers don't recommend that often, but can you trust them? I are not so sure.
I drive a Subaru, and looked at their maintenance schedule from Subaru USA. It recommends changing the oil 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) or 7.5 months, whichever occurs first. I then looked at Subaru Canada; it recommends changing the oil every 6,000 kilometers, exactly twice as often. Some might say that driving conditions in Canada are harder than in the USA, but I don't think there is that much difference between Montreal and Vermont or Vancouver and Seattle to DOUBLE the rate at which you change your oil.
Oil acts as a lubricant to reduce wear, and your car will last a lot longer if you change the oil appropriately. However much depends on how you drive; stop and go city driving, jackrabbit starts, dusty conditions and high speeds in hot weather and shorten the life of the oil. However if your car is relatively new, and you drive like we recommend on Planet Green, you can probably go 7,500 miles between oil changes. As your car gets older, if conditions are lousy or you drive like a jerk, you should probably change it more often.
Big trucking companies that use a lot of oil analyze it for impurities and viscosity before they change it; that is not cost-effective for car owners, so we are probably throwing out a lot of oil that could run a while longer. Perhaps that can be the next green business idea: Testing oil instead of automatically changing it.
More information can be found at Yahoo Autos.
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