Truck Oil Change - Mileage or Computer?

[92xj]

2012 Cummins 2500.
Every 5k on the dot with either T5 or T6, whichever is available at the time.
Fuel filter every 10k.
Air filter every 20k.
Tow 8.5k every other week. Average 15k miles a year. 5k of those are gravel.
I wish I could find front shocks that would last longer than a year. Next up is to try some remote reservoir and see if they can stand up.

 

[Kpdaniels]

I swap mine out every 5000 miles by the odometer. My truck is old enough that it doesn’t have a computer though so that’s the only option.

 

[Blockcaver]

What about changing based on engine operating hours? Thats what we did in the mining industry with large trucks and loaders that saw dusty, severe duty conditions. And of course we ran oil analysis too. Engines would routinely last 12,000 to 13,000 hrs between rebuilds and oil change intervals were around 250 hrs,,,mainly Cat diesels that I am speaking about. Air cooled Deutz engines lasted about half as long between rebuilds.

Anyone change oil on their diesel pickup based on hours? How about you gas engine pickup?

 

[Terry300]

Every 4,000 miles here.Never had a problem to old to change now..Lol

 

[pumpedTSI]

every 3-4k.....habit

 

[HunterCL]

I go every 5k miles on my 4Runner with full synthetic.

 

[MallardSX2]

Full synthetic.

Every 15,000

Been doing that for years.

Oil costs too much to change it more frequently than that.

 

[cnelk]

TTT for more oil discussion

 

[mgray]

Our fleet guy told us not to worry about mileage change intervals. Just do it when the truck says so. These are a fleet of 1/2 and 3/4 ton pickups.

 

[justin davis]

I do it every 5000. But our Toyota trucks have a light that comes on every 5000. So that’s when I do it.

 

[CobraChicken]

Mileage. Every 5k. 4th gen cummins. 90k on the clock. Oil changes are cheaper than parts and I don't trust the trucks gauge. Takes 2 sec to check the dip stick.

 

[IW17]

Not sure if it was mentioned, but I use full synthetic and change my oil every 7500 miles. It still has plenty of life, however that's what GM recommends, and since I have an extended warranty, I don't want to give them any reason to try and deny a claim. Once my warranty is over, I'll go back to changing my oil every ten thousand miles.

 

[Luked]

Change mine in my truck and my wifes car every 5k.
Oil is still cheaper than an engine, no matter what brand or syn you buy.
Worked at a dealer for a long time. Seen many many blown gummed up engines from not changing the oil.

I just reset the 2nd trip meter on each vehicle to zero when i change it to keep track of mileage.

 

[coiloil37]

I juggle a combination of what the OEM recommends, the type of oil I’m using and oil analysis.
Currently I do 15k km changes on my diesel truck, 10k change on the wife’s Honda and 100 hour changes on the boat. I do oil samples to keep an eye on things.

After a career in the oilfield I’m so used to doing samples and to many times they’ve alerted me to new problems. As a company we do 500 hour changes across all of our engines with mineral oil and I haven’t yet seen an oil related failure. I’ve got one cat with 84,000 hours on it and we rebuild the 60 series detroits at 60k hours.

To many of you are guessing on your change frequency based on something you’ve decided to believe or living in the past where engines and specifically oil were less refined and needed to be changed every 3k miles. Heck, how many said when the oil looks “dirty” WTF is that supposed to mean?

Modern engines and modern oils have pushed the limit so far your throwing money away and not doing the engine any good changing the oil prematurely. There’s a fairly solid literature on thousands of samples through blackstone labs where they used two specific engines across all the samples for those two engines the lab had processed. They compared ppm of wear materials against oil change frequency and made a pretty good case that wear goes up with fresh oil, down through the it’s service life then up again as the additive pack is worn out. Or in other words, there is no indication that wear is minimised with fresh oil, in fact it could be the opposite.

To those of you who think your doing your vehicle a favour by changing air filters frequently, your wrong and doing more harm then good. You should do a little research into air filters and barrier filtration. 90% of the particles an air filter passes are in the first 10% of its life. They’re the least effective when they’re new and they aren’t “bad” until they’re clogging enough to exceed the engines maximum restriction. Every time you disturb an air filter you’re allowing dust into the intake. If you want to do the best you can, put a restriction gauge on the intake and change the filter when it tells you to. Don’t touch or disturb it in between and you’ll be amazed how dirty it will be before it’s actually creating restriction. Air filters are supposed to look dirty, Donaldson filtration calls it the protective dust shield.

I was first exposed to this by Donaldson 10-15 years ago. At the time I changed filters when they looked dirty. I also had hundreds of oil samples with double digit silicon in them. I read Donaldson literature, went down many rabbit holes to verify the ideas they were expressing and eventually I started following it. I’ve now got hundreds more samples with 3-4 ppm silicon in them and haven’t seen a sample since with double digit numbers. My personal vehicles wear restriction gauges and filters don’t get changed until they need it.

Donaldson has some great info on this subject but here is a very small primer

Air Filter Efficiency - What Is It and How Is It Measured? | Donaldson Engine & Vehicle

Donaldson air filters in Donaldson air cleaner housings have a 99.95+% minimum overall efficiency. The efficiency of the filter actually improves as dust loads up on the surface of the filter, so an air filter gets better as it gets used.

www.donaldson.com