In Cold Temps is fresh oil important? (vehicle, idle, motorcycles)
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I was told that especially with an older engine like 200K + miles it is best to change your oil every 2 months or 2,000 miles in winter due to most of the wear occurring when starting, thoughts? comments?
That sounds a little overboard to me. Using synthetic oil and some kind of engine heater (recirculating, head bolt, dip stick) would do more for it than changing oil so often.
As with every other oil answer in the history of the internal combustion engine, it depends on how the engine is used. Is it granny's car that drives no more than 1-2 miles and never warms up? Then change the oil based on time, not miles. Is it a 300 miles a week highway commuter? Then 2000 miles is a dumb interval.
Also the 200k thing... if that was true then why not observe the recommendation when the car is new to prevent wear right out of the gate?
I was told that especially with an older engine like 200K + miles it is best to change your oil every 2 months or 2,000 miles in winter due to most of the wear occurring when starting, thoughts? comments?
No reason to change oil that often unless it sees some pretty extreme conditions. Follow manufacturer's guidelines and you'll be fine. Manufacturing and metallurgy has improved so much over the past few decades that MOST engines will out-last the vehicle they're in with just routine maintenance.
Also this idea about most wear occurring on start-up... it's a myth propagated by those old Slick-50 commercials from the 80's and 90's. It's just not true. I've rebuilt *hundreds* of diesel engines in heavy trucks- some of which were rarely shut down except for maintenance. By the "most wear occurring on start-up" logic... these engines should've never worn out. In practice, there was no real difference in longevity between sleeper trucks that idled all night for heat/ac vs. those equipped with a day cab or an auxiliary power unit... meaning the engine was shut down overnight.
Bah, I have a car with over 300k miles and it gets once a year oil changes (as many as 22k miles, usually in the 18~19k range though). I've done this since 40k miles when we bought the car and have zero issues. That's having bought the vehicle in Phoenix, AZ and spent 8 years in Wyoming and Colorado (with temps in the -40 range each winter) before moving to Georgia.
The things that degrade oil are heat (so you need more frequent changes through the summer in phoenix), water from condensation (easy to fix by driving the car long enough for the OIL to reach operating temps once a month, probably 30~40 minutes of sustained driving in the winter in Alaska) and acids that are a by-product of combustion (same exact fix as water).
Beyond that, it's simple use.
And unlike turkey-head, I'm a small engine mechanic (Motorcycles mostly) and fully believe that most wear comes from cold starts, or more specifically hard use on engines that aren't fully warmed. That doesn't mean there's no Other wear, just that for most vehicles it originates from cold starts and the use for the next 10~15 minutes after that. Long haul trucks simple won't see the same issues as passenger vehicles which don't see the same kind of use as toys (motorcycles, atvs, utvs, etc...)
Not sure what the difference is, between gas and diesel, on cold starts. Gas tends to run real rich; I suspect diesel runs richer too but nothing like gas. Not sure how much fuel wash exists, washing the oil off the cylinder walls, in either case.
I went back to gas after a few years of owning a diesel, and had to reacclimate to how much its oil smells like gas. Still, I noticed that after winter the oil smells more. I think the cold starts can accumulate fuel (if not raw gas then large portions of the unburnt gasoline components) in the oil.
Changing every 2k doesn't sound right though. Maybe if you drove 2k over the course of a New England winter, and did mostly short trips... oil is cheap, so why not. But otherwise, this sounds wrong.
And technically, after 200k, most of the wear inside the engine was already done... by the 200k you drove already. One or two more cold starts won't magically do it in, all of the sudden. Shorten up the OCI's, sure; but halving them seems ridiculous, only if they were too long to begin with.
I was told that especially with an older engine like 200K + miles it is best to change your oil every 2 months or 2,000 miles in winter due to most of the wear occurring when starting, thoughts? comments?
OP, for cold areas what really makes difference is oil viscosity, not how often you change it. Oil thickens in cold and this is why there is a beat up table of what oil to use for what driving conditions.
I suspect that whoever told you that had an oil report done during the winter and noticed the wear metals had gone up. This is true if you use a synthetic oil- wear metals in analysis will go up. So much for the "more" protection BS. Considering every base oil is now synthetic except the solvent refined Gp 1s there's no reason to specifically use a synthetic unless you need the arctic cold startups and even then most oils marketed as conventionals will work just as well. But, back to the subject, used oil that has sheared will cold flow far better than oil that is fresh so the statement has no merit. Rarely does oil oxidize or is nitration a factor during cold weather. With a modern fuel injected engine, even fuel dilution is not an issue anymore during the cold startup season.
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