Over-the-top break-in oil change recommendation?

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Originally Posted by OilUzer
Some say drive a new car like you stole it but not any of the om that I've read.



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You will read a lot of things online, or hear people say in real life. Most of those things are not in the owners manuals. However, if you follow everything in the owners manuals.....there's paid advertisement in those owners manuals. I have owners manuals which recommend using certain brands of gasoline and motor oil. I've even seen gas caps with fuel brands on them. Some owners manuals will tell you that your transmission fluid is a lifetime fluid. You simply can't believe everything you read online, hear on the streets, or read in an owners manual.

Common sense should prevail when it comes to driving your new car like you stole it.
 
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Originally Posted by OilUzer
Not many owners manual recommend early change these days ...

Even years ago, it wasn't all the common. Note, however, you'll still see it with all kinds of agricultural and industrial equipment.
 
Originally Posted by oil_film_movies
Twice in a thousand miles is a bit too much. OCD practically. I do think changing it out at 500 to 1,500 miles is a good idea though. That's enough.

I probably wind up here … a single early change … but don't reset the OLM …

I will normally do 1st diffs and xfer case in 10k-20k …
 
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Originally Posted by 4WD


I will normally do 1st diffs and xfer case in 10k-20k …


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I did mine along with an early transmission pan drop and filter change in both Jeeps @ 10K miles.
 
Originally Posted by Mr Nice
Every new vehicle I change at 4000 miles.

I just got a new Chevy and will do first oil change at 4000 miles, silly to change at 1000.


I disagree. I changed the factory fill in my Corvette at 1100 miles and it had 2% fuel in the oil, it had thinned out to 9.3 cst at 100c (on the verge of 5w20) and silicon was at 124 ppm. I am certainly glad I didn't leave that oil in the sump for another few thousand miles (or imagine if I had followed the OLM and gone 7 or 8000 miles??) And even at the second oil change at 3100 miles, the oil had thinned out to 9.6 cst and silicon was still high at 56 ppm, so I'm glad I did that one too.

Did I extend the lifespan of my engine by doing this? Who knows for sure, but I certainly didn't shorten it. I like to drive my car hard from time to time and don't like having a thinned out oil in there when doing that.
 
Originally Posted by OilUzer
Not many owners manual recommend early change these days ... None of my cars old or new said anything about early oil change!


All Corvettes with the dry sump system (Grand Sport, Z51, Z06, ZR1) call for a 500 mile oil change. I know that the BMW M2 (and probably all M cars) call for the first oil change at 1200 miles. I'm sure there are more than you think out there.
 
Originally Posted by Triple_Se7en

You aren't good at reading comprehension..... are you?


Far better than your writing skills.
 
Engines built in a factory tend to be factory clean. So I'm dubious what is floating around in there. All bets off once the engine is opened up for anything, let alone rebuilding.

I dunno. I have a limited set of data from personal experience. My 2000 Saturn went more or less by the book, and drank oil before 100k--but that nothing to do with break in oil and everything to do with using conventional and/or poor rings in a motor with problems. Our 2001 Civic, 2004 VW, 2010 Tundra and 2011 Camry all did 5k, 7.5k or 10k OCI's, initial change as required by the book, subsequent changes as required by the book, and all were fine at 150k or more. The VW went over 300k without using oil, the Tundra came to me used with who knows what service, but it's just as fine.
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Not sure I can blame my '99 Camry oil's usage on break-in, I think the quart it uses over 2-3k has more to do with being 20 years old.

I do remain a bit distrustful of OLM's but this isn't the 50's anymore either.
 
I just look at UOAs from the factory fills which are occasionally posted here. There's usually a lot of crap in the oil from break in. I'd rather get that junk sooner rather than later. Some claim it makes a difference, some claim it doesn't. Me I want it out.
 
Originally Posted by demarpaint
I just look at UOAs from the factory fills which are occasionally posted here. There's usually a lot of crap in the oil from break in. I'd rather get that junk sooner rather than later. Some claim it makes a difference, some claim it doesn't. Me I want it out.


Me too! And you only have one chance in your car's life to do that, so why not spend the $20-30 to do it?
 
Originally Posted by CT Rob
On my 2017 Tundra 5.7 i went 10,000 miles on factory fill.Changed oil and filter and good to go.


The 2012 Highlander in my basement got it's first change at 10,000 also...and one every 10,000 miles since then. Mobil1 EP. I'll change it again this weekend as it nears 120,000 miles.
 
I'm old and old school. For my wife's 2017 2.3 EB Explorer we ran the ff to 2,000 miles then had the dealer do one of their free oil changes. They use some unknown conventional oil. Left that in for another 3,200 miles then I changed it myself with Mobil 1 5W-30 which I ran for 7,000 miles and did an UOA which came out actually really good. Obviously I flushed the early wear metals with the first two oil changes. Even a subsequent UOA using Mobil 1 5W-30 for 6,200 miles in the dead of winter with lots of remote starts and idling showed real good wear metals. Ford's first oil change recommendation is following the iOLM to the end. In my case that would have been 10,000 miles on the factory fill in a turbo DI engine with a synthetic blend oil
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. It doesn't give me warm and fuzzy feelings needless to say. I guess if you trade your vehicles frequently or lease them then it doesn't matter to you, it's the next owner's issue if there is an oil problem.

Whimsey
 
But the "wear metals" that show up on a UOA obtained by elemental spectrography are not what is causing damage, if any. The damage causing particles are generally too large to show up on a standard UOA.
 
Originally Posted by kschachn
But the "wear metals" that show up on a UOA obtained by elemental spectrography are not what is causing damage, if any. The damage causing particles are generally too large to show up on a standard UOA.


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Originally Posted by kschachn
But the "wear metals" that show up on a UOA obtained by elemental spectrography are not what is causing damage, if any. The damage causing particles are generally too large to show up on a standard UOA.


Really and just how large are these parts in microns?
 
Originally Posted by Whimsey
I'm old and old school. For my wife's 2017 2.3 EB Explorer we ran the ff to 2,000 miles then had the dealer do one of their free oil changes. They use some unknown conventional oil. Left that in for another 3,200 miles then I changed it myself with Mobil 1 5W-30 which I ran for 7,000 miles and did an UOA which came out actually really good. Obviously I flushed the early wear metals with the first two oil changes. Even a subsequent UOA using Mobil 1 5W-30 for 6,200 miles in the dead of winter with lots of remote starts and idling showed real good wear metals. Ford's first oil change recommendation is following the iOLM to the end. In my case that would have been 10,000 miles on the factory fill in a turbo DI engine with a synthetic blend oil
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. It doesn't give me warm and fuzzy feelings needless to say. I guess if you trade your vehicles frequently or lease them then it doesn't matter to you, it's the next owner's issue if there is an oil problem.

Whimsey


I'm old school too. Regarding the OLM I did some simple math with mine, I realize TBN doesn't track linear. In my 3.6L Pentastar Rubicon running PU, I had a TBN of 3.9 after 3980 miles, and a TBN of 2.9 after 5,000 miles. At 4,411 miles the OLM shows 53% life remaining. Common sense and a little math tells me to ignore my OLM.
 
Without additional processing such as an acid digestion, one really doesn't know how much potentially damaging "stuff" is actually in the oil via a standard UOA using ICP. You could have a UOA with sky-high metal results yet the oil would be harmless to the engine, with the opposite also being true.

This illustration is lifted from a Machinery Lubrication article. Note the upper limit of size detectable by emission spectrography and where it falls on their threat graph. It isn't exact since it also depends on the chemical composition of the particles and the particular make of the analysis machine. But it shows that when people on here post that they have "all that metal" in the oil per a UOA and want to get it out because it is damaging the engine, they are not necessarily correct. Straight ICP is really the wrong method to use to determine damaging particles in oil just as was AA back in the day when I did analysis in college (although AA is strongly dependent on residence time in the plasma).

If you perform an acid digestion you get a better sense of large particle contamination. You don't get any size numbers, but if the analysis is significantly different than the undigested sample it is a strong clue.

[Linked Image]
 
Originally Posted by JohnnyJohnson
Well that's all very nice but where are the particle sizes they are talking?

I know you asked that but it doesn't matter. The method shown in the graphic is the one used in a typical UOA such as what Blackstome performs and that is what I was commenting on.
 
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