While not lookign at my owners manual, I also seem to recall it mentioning short trip driving where the engine never really reaches operating temps in colder weather. I have extended idling periods (especially in the winter - the office needs to stay warm you know ), operating in dusty conditions (construction sites and dirt roads), and off road operation (see previous), and frequent short tripping. For example, I replace my OEM air filter roughly every 15,000 miles instead of the regular schedule of 30,000 miles due to dust buildup. Don't even get me started on why I don't use a K&N - we'll just leave it at I don't. Therefore, I use the severe service schedule, although I am planning on doing an oil analysis to see how I am really doing...

 

"if we were to do an oil analysis with your oil at 3k and mine at 5k I don't think on average we would see much of a difference at all. (Especially with synthetics.)"

That (may) be true, but in all honesty I am not going to waste my time and money on an oil analysis to tell me that what I am doing is perfectly normal.

Changing at 3k will do NO harm at all to anything. I am not knocking anyone that wants to go longer, but not going to have some people tell me its not a good thing to do (to soon) or to make someone else money. As far as the car I race it gets an oil change after ever race. Street car/truck, or race car/truck its very cheap insurance.

Will it make my truck last longer then yours? I have absolutely no idea, and I would be a fool to even "think" it would. Since I can not say one way or the other, and for that fact neither can you then it goes to show if someone does decide to change at 3k no problem and no worrys, and a little more piece of mind.

 

Sorry if my post made it sound as if to tell you, you are wrong. That was not my intention. So if I delivered critisim on a harpoon, rather then on a platter, I am sorry.

My point was that the service guide says longer then 5k is accepatable.
The origional question was how long is the interval, and for the syn croud, it is longer, and for the dyno, shorter, and for the special group shorter yet.

I was trying to explain where I got my idea from, aside from the consumer reports NYC taxi test, where they showed under special service conditions, a freshly REBUILT ( not new mind you ) engine did not care if it was 3k or 5k, the failure rate among 100 engines was the same ( 2 out of 100, 1 of each I think rebuild problem, not 100% sure so take it with a grain of salt ).

sorry again if you took my post to be; "you stupid SOB...", that was not the intention.

BTW I change at 5k myself, so on top of the money of the 3k to 5k service interval, I am using my own labor and saving that much more. Guess I am just a cheap SOB

 

All is good

And your not the only cheap SOB, I too am a cheap SOB, then again I love any time I can play ( I mean perform maintenance) on my truck, including oil and filter changes...

 

I completely agree....

 

It's been awhile since I posted to an "oil" related thread, so I'll just toss my "habit" in case someone is keeping track

I used to do the 3k changes when I was running the dino oil. Cheap and kept me all 'warm and fuzzy'.....

After doing my own research and just to try something different, I went to Mobil1 in my truck with 82k on it at the time and the wifes Acclaim with 110k on it at the time.

I did change it at 3k the first time, just because it was so hard to break the habit....

Now I'm very comfortable with 5k between changes. That seems to be the time it needs another quart anyway, so I just change it.

Still have that 'warm and fuzzy' feeling and now the cars have 96k and 120k respectively......

I do like to work on my truck as much as possible too, but I can always find something to do on it!