Originally Posted By: Falcon_LS
15,000 km (9,375 mi) oil changes with conventional oil meeting ACEA A3/B4 were the norm in Europe some time back, before all the manufacturer specific extended drain specifications surfaced.
Given today's fuel quality, especially in the EU, CA and NY, I reckon 10,000 mile (16,000 km) drain intervals shouldn't be all that hard to achieve - many vehicles calling for synthetics in Europe are now running 30,000 km (18,750 mi) anyway.
+1
As California already have a good quality gasoline with low sulphur, it shouldn't be a big deal to run at least 10k miles OCI.
Around here where I live, 15,000 km is considered the shortest possible OCI for a car. If a new car would have only 10,000 km OCI recommended by the manufacturer, people would laugh at it with disbelief
Also, before I started to read BITOG I had never heard about severe driving conditions, where one should halve the OCI. And I don't know anyone else who would bother to think that kinds of things around here either. It's always the full OCI what the manufacturer recommends and that's it.
But most of us in Finland use synthetic oils. I have my doubts about synthetic blends, and I don't understand why the oil companies produce conventional oils anymore (which are called mineral oils around here, by the way). I think the synthetic oil is the way to go here because: 1) we don't have cheap quick lube shops, 2) labour is expensive, 3) oil is expensive, 4) gasoline is expensive, 5) it's -25C (-13F) or colder each winter and 6) everybody just wants to run the full OCI.
So, 10k mile OCIs with the low sulphur gasoline at the sunny California? It should be a piece of cake! For the rest of the USA with a higher sulphur gasoline? I can understand the 5k mile OCIs.
But luckily it seems that by the year 2025 the whole USA will have low sulphur gasoline, and you can all start to enjoy the carefree 10k+ OCIs! Yay!
http://wot.motortrend.com/1403_epa_looking_to_lower_sulfur_levels_gasoline.html
And finally, please don't get me wrong. I'm not here to judge anyone. I just wanted to give a different view to the subject. Heck, because of the influence of BITOG, I have already dropped my OCI from the manufacturer recommended 15,000 km to 10,000 km and started to use oversized oil filters (just because). Now, how about that!
Cheers!