I really need to change my oil, its been over 10k miles. Luckily I use Mobil 1 synthetic oil so it seems to be holding up. Hopefully I’ll get it done tomorrow.
Comments:
Synthetic
I was skeptical at first. But now I have seen what regular oil looks like after 5,000 miles and synthetic looks like after 10k. The regular oil looks darker and thinner/watery. The synth looks like maple syrup, a dark amber color and good viscosity. I finally did change my oil after about 12k miles. I also use the oem VW oil filters. They are rated for 2 years/30,000 km which is around 18,000 miles. If I had to change my oil every 3k miles, I would be doing it almost monthly. If you are changing it every 3k miles, you probably will see little benefit with synthetic oil unless you drive in extreme tempuratures.
The two benefits I’m looking for are a longer interval between changes, and the potentially better shape my engine will be in the long term. I’m on my 3rd Toyota truck that’s broken 100k miles and for the last 10 years switching to synthetic has been on my long list of things to do that I’ve never gotten around to.
That said, my current Toy truck just flipped 100k a few weeks ago, and it’s never failed to start or left me stranded, so maybe taking care of the engine isn’t really something I need to improve on. My first Toy truck got to almost 200k before I got rid of it. The springs in the seats and the armrest on the door were the things that were giving out, not the mechanicals.
In any case, I do still want to do this, and your response has me thinking that I’ll need to look into what constitutes a “better” oil filter. I’m thinking that cheap filter’s don’t much matter if you’re putting 3k miles on it, but if you take that to 10k, it could become more significant…
