Originally Posted By: tpitcher
Take 2 cars with engines spec'd & tolerances exactly the same.
Car #1: Change the oil at 6,300 miles for the 1st time + 6,300 miles for the next several times while the "Metal Soup" slowly reduces.
Car #2: Change the oil at 1,000 miles, 2,500 miles, 4,500 miles & at 6,300 miles.
Then treat both cars & engines exactly the same in controlled test circumstances.
I BET the engine with the additional initial oil changes that removes the "Metal Soup" earlier has less internal wear and will last longer than the one that has the metal swirl in the oil longer.
Now, does it really matter, as both will go a very long time and run just fine? Probably not, but I believe that would be the situation!
Nicely put and i fully agree with you. None of us want metallic, abrasive oil flowing through the block, so i don't understand why the initial thousand miles of an engine's life is so different and many of us think "it's ok"...
Originally Posted By: gathermewool
Originally Posted By: Artem
Do you guys really and truly believe that if it was up to the engineers, with the main goal being to do everything possible to extend engine life, that they would still actually suggest that you DON'T drain the FF because it does absolutely zero harm and to keep it flowing through the engine for 10,000 miles...?
Engineers design the block with longevity in mind but then the accountant team takes over and starts cutting corners in order to... You guessed it, save money. Many dealerships offer free oil changes for x amount of miles and an extra oil change x 300,000 cars = a lot of extra expenses that they COULD avoid.
Irrespective of whether the oil can last the interval before breaking down, I don't think that the wear metals in the FF produce anything more than a negligible amount of additional wear. If you want a definitive answer, I don't have one, since I haven't seen a tear-down comparison between groups of cars that dump the factory fill early and those that ran the full initial interval, all subsequent maintenance and driving styles being the same as well.
Unfortunately, a study like this will probably never be generated, so the best can do is keep an eye on those who are kind of enough to post up FF UOA, and then update with subsequent UOA throughout the life of the car.
We can easily take two lawnmowers, run em for 5 minutes to warm up the blocks then change the FF in one of them. Continue to run them both for say 5 hours a day each and every day for a year (cold starts each morning to simulate real life) and then disassemble the blocks after a year and examine the wear.
This test could be replicated time and time again with two or even more pairs running at the same time to confirm the results with the second batch of engines.
Maybe even throw in a third mower in there that will get oil changes every 3 months to really kick it up a notch and see how oil changes will reduce total engine wear as well.
Something like this could very easily be done by someone living in an area without any neighbors near by, which will complain about the constant noise day in and day out. Seems to me like the results will easily prove this debate since from what i know, lawn mower engines down have oil filters (the regular mowers anyway).
Thoughts? Sounds like a $2-3,000 dollar experiment to get data from several engines.
Originally Posted By: tpitcher
Take 2 cars with engines spec'd & tolerances exactly the same.
Car #1: Change the oil at 6,300 miles for the 1st time + 6,300 miles for the next several times while the "Metal Soup" slowly reduces.
Car #2: Change the oil at 1,000 miles, 2,500 miles, 4,500 miles & at 6,300 miles.
Then treat both cars & engines exactly the same in controlled test circumstances.
I BET the engine with the additional initial oil changes that removes the "Metal Soup" earlier has less internal wear and will last longer than the one that has the metal swirl in the oil longer.
Now, does it really matter, as both will go a very long time and run just fine? Probably not, but I believe that would be the situation!
Originally Posted By: gathermewool
What do you think the difference would be, though? 550k vs 500k? 550k vs 150k? Is there an increased risk of wear-related engine issues, such as consumption and leakage? I don't have anything to go on, but I'm going to stick with saying it doesn't matter.
It's not a matter of how many more miles engine A will go vs engine B but more so of reducing engine wear PERIOD (which is why we're all here for, right?).
I've seem identical stock cars on the dyno putting out very different numbers (even though they are the same). Taking into account minor manufacturing differences since no two blocks are the same, i'd expect a 2-3HP difference, 4-5hp at the most but these engine were 10-15hp apart. Mileage was close. We can argue what is causing the power difference all day but it could be as simple as the break-in procedure / maintenance.
