Oil change at 4100 miles
 

I took my car to the dealership for my first oil change after buying the car 6 months ago. I am pretty shocked that Scion recommends a oil change every 7500 miles. I drive my car on a daily basis. Luckily for me, I work a couple of miles from work and haven't really driven my car on the highway for more than an hour yet. Was wondering if it is more beneficial to do the oil change every 4500 miles or just every six months. Will definitely will be using mobil1 full synthetic from this point on. Any comments or suggestions?

I suggest searching, and if your doing that small of trips all the time over that length of time id do it every 6 months. Small trips are harder on the engine from what I've heard.

Hi djdrugga ..... http://www.runemasterstudios.com/gra...mages/wave.gif

You may wish to refer to page 37 of the maintenance guide for your car.

It suggests a oil change every 7,500 miles or 7.5 months.

It also says, under severe conditions (which includes repeated short distance driving) an oil change every 3,750 miles or 3.75 months.

Your call .....;)

humfrz

No harm changing it earlier or later. Everyone is different as it depends on where they live, how often they drive, how hard they etc.

I'm in the same boat. Round trip for me is 10 miles to work and home.


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With that kind of driving, I'd go with the 7,500 or 7.5 month plan .... ;)


humfrz

I hav 2 stop lights and hav to jump on to jump off the hwy. I'm going with the 7.5 month plan because ther is no way I would reach that many miles. Plus in WI I would only get to drive it less than half the year. And we would take my wife's si due to the hassle of putting our daughter in her car seat in the "back seat" lol

.....but....but......I'll bet she likes it back there ...... ;)


humfrz

Thanks for the evidence! Maybe now she'll agree that our daughter can sit in the back. I'll have to convince my wife to let us take the frs out more often. Lol. I'll tell her we can rack up miles on it instead of hers.

Just condition your kids to want to ride in the FR-S with some good old fashioned Pavlovian techniques:

Every time they ride in the FR-S, they get an ice cream cone from McDonald's or something like that. Soon, they'll be begging mommy to ride in daddy's car.

My daughter will be 3 in April. She gets mad that she hasent rode in "dadys new car" lol

You need to do the minimum recommended by the manufacturer to keep your warranty in effect. But the simple truth is that there are essentially no oil-related engine failures in modern cars, as long as their oil and filter are changed every year or 10k (which is the current recommendation from Porsche for all their vehicles, as I recall) with any high quality oil meeting the latest API grade specs (SN). Full synthetic minimizes long term wear (like 150k+ miles), but plain ol' dinosaur oil works pretty well. Only if you regularly drive such short distances that your engine doesn't fully warm up should you worry about the kind of wear that was common before the modern era of oils and materials.

I've torn down and miked many motors over the years - I was an active SCCA racer for about 25 years and have built / rebuilt / restored about 30 cars from flathead Fords to 2 stroke Saabs. Barring abuse (e.g. running in a sand storm without an air filter), valve guide and ring wear before 200k are largely problems of the past except for police cars and taxis. Bearings last hundreds of thousands of miles. My Formula Vee had a pretty stressed 1200 cc air cooled Beetle engine making 26 more hp than it's factory-designed 40 at a red line 1700 above the original, with an oil temp of 285 at the end of a regional race. I measured no wear at all on the crank throws after a hard 14 race season and only a few thou after 30 races (my FV rebuild interval). I'm not a national front runner, I'm just a cheap old guy who loves to race and keep up with the pack - I ran on Pep Boys' house brand synthetic until they discontinued it. Street or track, all you need is clean, filtered oil changed at the manufacturer's recommended interval to be worry-free.

My FR-S will get fresh synthetic whatever's-on-sale-at-Pep-Boys every 6 months (I drive about 8k/yr these days). Relax, and let me know the next time you see a modern street car throw a rod, break a wrist pin, or blow visible oil smoke out its tailpipe.

My Honda CRZ went minimum 10k miles between oil changes using the built in oil-life calculator. Of course all I did with it was easy going expressway driving.

The FR-S, which also runs 99% expressway, is currently on the "wait until 6k miles then think about getting around to it some time sooner than later" plan.

Use good oil and don't stress about it.

Great shot of the girls