Originally Posted by Or
Originally Posted by wtd
I still have my last two new vehicles I bought and on my 98 Chevy K1500 with the 5.7L, I did the whole recommended break-in procedure for the first 500 miles and changed the oil early. This truck has always used oil, about a 1/2- 1qrt every 3,000 miles depending on what oil I've used. I also did this same procedure on my prior new truck, a 93 S-10 4x4 with the 4.3L and it used about the same amount of oil too.
On my Mustang, I broke it in with several hard pulls and then let it coast back down under engine braking and I didn't change the oil until it was a year old and had 4,600 miles on it and this car uses no noticeable oil during oil changes which is anywhere from 4,000-7,200 miles.
Both vehicles run fine. I've not seen any evidence that changing oil early extends engine life so I quit doing it.
You are equating oil use and engine life, which are not the same. Also, the oil use you describe is about the minimum I've seen on average for those generation GM's.
Genuine studies of fleet vehicles over long periods of time have correlated early changes with longer engine life; no guesswork, faith, or small sample size.
Most fleet vehicles are also on the go a lot more than the average vehicle so there are not a lot of cold starts so I don't think you can base fleet use on the average owner. I also highly doubt most fleet use vehicles are getting early oil changes which would be a waste of money. Do you have links to these studies that you reference?
My point in my example is that I have not seen any benefit of changing the oil early in the vehicles that I did so or changing it at a relatively low 3,000 mile intervals. The engine in the truck still has the common piston slap when it's cold. I assume the engine is healthy anyway but who knows.