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Depends on how you drive the car, but if you are using a good synthetic, not making a lot of short trips, not operating in a very dirty environment, if the engine is good and tight, you can go 15K between oil changes no problemo.
I personally wouldn't go 15K on the *initial* oil change, some break-in wear does occur and I would want to change both the oil and filter somewhere around 4000-7500, but after that no reason not to go 15K until the engine reaches a really high mileage, at which point I might want to do it a bit more often than the maintenance computer suggests, since at that point the engine will have more blow-by, etc.
Depends on how you drive the car, but if you are using a good synthetic, not making a lot of short trips, not operating in a very dirty environment, if the engine is good and tight, you can go 15K between oil changes no problemo.
I personally wouldn't go 15K on the *initial* oil change, some break-in wear does occur and I would want to change both the oil and filter somewhere around 4000-7500, but after that no reason not to go 15K until the engine reaches a really high mileage, at which point I might want to do it a bit more often than the maintenance computer suggests, since at that point the engine will have more blow-by, etc.
I agree with you on that note, although I relied on the service indicator at the first 15,000 miles of the car the first time I had the oil change. If I'm not mistaken, for the M3 there's a 1200 mile oil service on the first 1200 miles of the car.
LOL, even on my Honda lawn mower, I had the oil change on the first 5hours of use.
This issue gets debated ad nauseaum on the BMW message board sites. Just a few points:
- The 15,000 mile interval is not finite but the way it is displayed makes it seem so . If you drive the car hard it will go to zero in as little as 8,000 miles (as measured by the odometer.) I've heard that it's based on a certain volume of fuel going through the engine. So short trips around town will trigger it sooner than high MPG freeway driving.
- My 330 has an 8 quart sump of fully synthetic oil. By comparison, most Japanese cars have 4 quarts of "regular" motor oil. Assuming a 5-7,000 mile change interval for the latter is it really so much of a stretch that the German engine can go 2-3X as long?
- People have been posting oil sample analysis from their BMW engines for years. The evidence suggests that 10,000 - 15,000 mile change intervals are perfectly safe for the engine. As others have pointed out, these extended change intervals have been around for years and premature engine failures are not common on BMW's.
If you still insist on $75-150 oil changes every 3,000-5,000 miles it's your money, do with it what you please
When I had the 540i, I changed it about every 7K miles though the interval is supposed to be longer. I don't change it every 5K miles like my other cars cause it took 8qt of synthetic oil. I trust that the oil is still **** after 7K miles but I am not so sure about the filters. In today world of advance oil, I am not worry about oil breaking down but rather that the oil filter is in effective too quickly.
- The 15,000 mile interval is not finite but the way it is displayed makes it seem so . If you drive the car hard it will go to zero in as little as 8,000 miles (as measured by the odometer.) I've heard that it's based on a certain volume of fuel going through the engine. So short trips around town will trigger it sooner than high MPG freeway driving.
This is an older thread, but I wanted to highlight this point real quick. ALL manufacturers and engineers based their recommendations on engine services on the amount of FUEL consumed by the engine. They then extrapolate this number into miles/months to make it easier for consumers to keep track of. The onboard diagnostic systems are basically tracking fuel usage as part of an algorithm that also takes into account things like cold starts and excessive idle. The algorithm "weights" these factors to determine how much of the oil has been "used".
In the case of the BMW you are dealing with a large quantity of pure synthetic through a good filter. If you are always driving at moderate highway speeds with little stop and go and few cold starts, you will stretch the life of the oil out. If you are constantly in traffic, accelerating hard and do a lot of cold starts, you will "use up" the oil faster.
These recommendations and the oil life monitors are not marketing gimmicks or "anti-engineering" recommendations. They are actually very well thought out systems designed to give you the maximum life out of your oil. Why people choose to fight with them when they aren't doing anything crazy like racing at a track or offroading is beyond me.
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