Shorter OCI for GDI Engines?

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rob1715

rob1715

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My apologies if this topic has been talked about. I looked and there seems to be some conflicting info. and would like to take a fresh look at it. Get it a little more concise.

My understanding is oil changes for GDI engines depend on factors such as gas dilution, usage, miles (city/highway/mix), type of car, etc... The manual seems to be simply a guideline. I read it as "up to X miles", not "at X miles" get it changed. The oil results can only be ascertained by proper testing and it's upon the results that we make our determination. Maybe an oil sniff test would be good for gas? Would you say each vehicle is used in a different manner (some tow, main city driving, main highway driving, drive like a maniac) and that we should test it every so often to see how our engines are doing instead of a 1 size fits all approach such as every 5k miles or 7500 miles?

If the add pack and TBN are still good after 7k miles with no signs of increased wear which is indicative of many tests I've seen, then why change to a lower OCI for GDI? GDI is expressed as "harder on engines" but wouldn't a proper oil take care of any shortcomings?

2019 Kia Sorento 2.4l GDI. PP 5w20 in the Winter and 5w30 Summer.
 
You are asking a good question based on your understanding of oil analysis.
The purpose of oil analysis is to determine the serviceability of the oil (this is based on
Re GDI assumptions). Some oil analysis results can show based off trends and records of a part is failing or a coolant leak is taking place. It can also help determine if there is a fuel delivery problem in non GDI applications by detecting excess fuel.
Oil analysis cannot tell you in no uncertain terms that your engine is not wearing or is wearing worse. It detects metals of certain sizes in the oil but do to the particle size and the variations that wear can take this is not a reliable tool. Some engines shed more if ion in UOAs than others yet they last for a very long time, while some engines can have a series of excellent reports and suddenly have a catastrophic engine wear related failure.
With that said oil analysis is a good tool when used for its intended purpose. Of verifying the serviceability of the oil for further use or to condemn the oil.

With GDI you also have GDI soot that is very hard and abrasive and hard to detect without a better particle count of smaller particles.
The oil can handle some fuel dilution, it can keep,that soot in suspension(which is great for cleanliness) but it can't stop the scratching.
Some GDI engines may have better characteristics than others as far as soot production..the tailpipe is a good indicator if you are producing soot. There is no direct measurement for it in most consumer oil analysis.

That and the fuel loading in some of them is the reason for limiting oci.
I have a DS4 system in the Tacoma and it doesn't seem any more sooty than thenPFI in then4 runner. While my TGDI Beamer was a nasty soot producer and I always limited that to 5 k. Probably would have gone shorter if I had a dipstick to agonize over.
 
If I owned a GDI engine vehicle I would follow a severe service interval and get a UOA to see if it needs to be tweaked. IMO shorter is better, especially with a GDI engine.
 
A lot of GDI engines have issues with fuel dilution, Hyundai/Kia tends to recommend 7500 miles IIRC for primarily highway driving and 3750 for rough service conditions, you can generally get away with it on the highway because the engine should stay hot enough to make the fuel want to evaporate out of the oil and be routed through the PCV to be combusted, for short trips around town more fuel ends up in the oil and the oil doesn't get the opportunity to stay hot enough for long enough to evap off the fuel contamination. Fuel contamination is one of those things that's harder to counter with the oil formulation, the only way to really counter it is to use a thicker oil to counter the contamination but then you have the problem of when the oil is fresh it's thick and takes more energy to pump and increases friction. Also I think GDI engines tend to have greater soot problems and while a small particle bypass filtration system may make sense on a big diesel engine it's a little much for a small passenger car, changing the oil more often is the more sensible option from the manufacturers standpoint.
 
Originally Posted by rob1715
My apologies if this topic has been talked about. I looked and there seems to be some conflicting info. and would like to take a fresh look at it. Get it a little more concise.

My understanding is oil changes for GDI engines depend on factors such as gas dilution, usage, miles (city/highway/mix), type of car, etc... The manual seems to be simply a guideline. I read it as "up to X miles", not "at X miles" get it changed. The oil results can only be ascertained by proper testing and it's upon the results that we make our determination. Maybe an oil sniff test would be good for gas? Would you say each vehicle is used in a different manner (some tow, main city driving, main highway driving, drive like a maniac) and that we should test it every so often to see how our engines are doing instead of a 1 size fits all approach such as every 5k miles or 7500 miles?

If the add pack and TBN are still good after 7k miles with no signs of increased wear which is indicative of many tests I've seen, then why change to a lower OCI for GDI? GDI is expressed as "harder on engines" but wouldn't a proper oil take care of any shortcomings?

2019 Kia Sorento 2.4l GDI. PP 5w20 in the Winter and 5w30 Summer.

*I just posted a UOA of the same engine (2017) Hyundai 2.4L GDI (non - turbo) engine using QSUD 5W20 ... Long story short , forget going over 5K miles without changing the oil unless you are 95% interstate miles with no stop & go city or suburban driving and runs of at least 30 minutes each drive . At approx. 4K miles (with make up oil) on my OCI there is not a whole lot left to the QSUD 5W20 additives from my UOA report to make me want to have a typical OCI more than 5K miles max on this Hyundai / Kia GDI engine !
 
I put on 20,000 miles a year with lots of long vacation trips. It's easy for me to remember to divide by five, so I always do 5K changes. I also constantly check my dip stick and keep it on or above max even if it means putting an ounce or two of oil in. HyunKia engines do not like to run low IMO. The above comments on soot are valuable. Today's post about the guy running a 20K OCI (with add oil) on an '03 Sephia are a reminder of how simple engines of two decades ago were with no turbos and no GDI. Those days are over.
 
Thanks ChrisD I read your post and that's what got me thinking about it. Would different oils reflect differently on different engines? Meaning, would QS 5w30 in my 03 Matrix with longer OCI be fine, but in modern GDI engines, not so much? Does GDI chew up oil faster? Is that the consensus, or does anyone have UOA they can post? That's how I'm reading your comment.
Originally Posted by ChrisD46
Originally Posted by rob1715
My apologies if this topic has been talked about. I looked and there seems to be some conflicting info. and would like to take a fresh look at it. Get it a little more concise.

My understanding is oil changes for GDI engines depend on factors such as gas dilution, usage, miles (city/highway/mix), type of car, etc... The manual seems to be simply a guideline. I read it as "up to X miles", not "at X miles" get it changed. The oil results can only be ascertained by proper testing and it's upon the results that we make our determination. Maybe an oil sniff test would be good for gas? Would you say each vehicle is used in a different manner (some tow, main city driving, main highway driving, drive like a maniac) and that we should test it every so often to see how our engines are doing instead of a 1 size fits all approach such as every 5k miles or 7500 miles?

If the add pack and TBN are still good after 7k miles with no signs of increased wear which is indicative of many tests I've seen, then why change to a lower OCI for GDI? GDI is expressed as "harder on engines" but wouldn't a proper oil take care of any shortcomings?

2019 Kia Sorento 2.4l GDI. PP 5w20 in the Winter and 5w30 Summer.

*I just posted a UOA of the same engine (2017) Hyundai 2.4L GDI (non - turbo) engine using QSUD 5W20 ... Long story short , forget going over 5K miles without changing the oil unless you are 95% interstate miles with no stop & go city or suburban driving and runs of at least 30 minutes each drive . At approx. 4K miles (with make up oil) on my OCI there is not a whole lot left to the QSUD 5W20 additives from my UOA report to make me want to have a typical OCI more than 5K miles max on this Hyundai / Kia GDI engine !
 
Thanks ChrisD I read your post and that's what got me thinking about it. Would different oils reflect differently on different engines? Meaning, would QS 5w30 in my 03 Matrix with longer OCI be fine, but in modern GDI engines, not so much? Does GDI chew up oil faster? Is that the consensus, or does anyone have UOA they can post? That's how I'm reading your comment. There seems to be many variables that need to be taken into account. One UOA says the oil is good for 10k miles while another car owner with a different make/model, but exact same oil, says nope, I'm going 4k OCI and that's it.
 
I have a 2012 Hyundai Accent with the 1.6L GDI engine, the general consensus I have seen online for this engine and most other non-turbo Hyundai GDI engines is that 5000 miles is a good oil change interval no matter what type of oil is used.

I am going with Valvoline Synthetic Maxlife 0w20 for the next two oil changes and may try Valvoline's Maxlife synthetic blend in the future depending on pricing at the time of purchase.
 
A lot of car manufacturers do not specify the oil type (dino vs. blend vs. syn).

Unless you have some fancy LL or MB or VW spec to force you into syn, one could use a dino instead of syn.

Also some cars that spec 0W20 (or even 0W16 these days) kind of force you to get syn. As far as I know there is no dino 0W20 or 0W16 ...

One of my newer cars (V8 MPFI) says 0W20 GL-5 and that's all it says. That's why I joined bitog and got interested in syn oil. Prior to that I was ALL dino in ALL our cars ...

One of our Hyundai (2014 Tuscon 2.4 L - GDI) has same engine as op and the spec is 5W20/5W30/10W30.
Prior to bitog, I used dino 5W30/10W30 in that car. I guess the 5W30 that I used was syn-blend but I didn't know since the bottle didn't say syn-blend otherwise I would have avoided it. I was afraid of syn prior to joining bitog due to couple of bad experiences with my old Tacoma. Long story ... lol

Our 2.4L gdi recommends 7500/3750 oci ...
If your oci is x miles with 10W30. Let's assume x=4000 in this case so we don't later go over 7500 and get some people excited ...
Can you extend the oci by %50 or more (to 6000 miles) if using syn? Recently I've used Chevron Supreme 10W30 and M1 EP 5/10W30 and PP 5W30 in this car. Every time I used a syn, I have extended my oci by %50+ for example from 5K to 7500 +/- miles.

Long story long, should dino vs. Syn be a consideration in the oci in any engine specifically di engines?
 
Originally Posted by ChrisD46

*I just posted a UOA of the same engine (2017) Hyundai 2.4L GDI (non - turbo) engine using QSUD 5W20 ... Long story short , forget going over 5K miles without changing the oil unless you are 95% interstate miles with no stop & go city or suburban driving and runs of at least 30 minutes each drive . At approx. 4K miles (with make up oil) on my OCI there is not a whole lot left to the QSUD 5W20 additives from my UOA report to make me want to have a typical OCI more than 5K miles max on this Hyundai / Kia GDI engine !

I am sticking with a 5k/6 month interval on my Hyundai/Kia GDI motors.
My Santa Fe is 5000 miles (right at about 6 months), mom's Soul is 6 months ( The Santa Fe does have some short trips which would bring it into Hyundai's "severe" category, but also has a lot of long trips, so I take 5000 miles as a comprimise.
The Soul is almost all short trips, so a 6 month interval is best for it.

I am also using xw-30 oils because of GDI (5w-30 is the spec for the Santa Fe (but 10w-30 and 5w-40 are options), the Soul has 5w-20 and 5w-30 listed as approved).
 
I initially ran a 5,000 mile OCI with M1 5W-30 on my Mazdaspeed 3. The UOA results encouraged me to extend the OCI to 7,500 miles. Blackstone suggested I try a 10,000 mile OCI but I stuck with 7,500 miles as that corresponded with Mazda's normal service schedule. I'm currently running a 10,000 mile/one year OCI on the N20 and N55 with BMW TPT 0W-30 in my newer BMWs- and not losing a bit of sleep over it.
 
I like easy numbers, every 5K for me. Truly K.I.S.S. method. If I were driving a vehicle that were easier on oil, then 1 year.
 
I'm doing 4K OCIs with my 2019, which has the 2.4. Every four-K is just as easy to remember as every three. We used to do 3k OCIs for over three decades and nobody complained about trying to multiply by 3. So multiplying by 4 is easy too. It's called Simple Math and like the old days doing 3K OCIs, there were no complaints and never forgetting. Just mark your mileage in the back of your owners manual at each OCI and keep the mileage in the glove box.

My 2.4 oil is currently at 2.5k of it's OCI - oil is pitch black already and by the time I reach 4K, that oil is going to look nasty. If you know how to change your own oil, then life is good. Oil changes are easy.

If someone else at a lube shop is changing your oil, then get used to shelling out extra money every 4K.
Your 2019 is worth the extra money for Uncle Ed's Shop to do the work. Take care of your ride and if money is tight, then why did you buy that new car?
 
Last edited:
Older South Korean GDI 2.4s biggest issue are the rod bearings. Might even still be an issue in the last 3-4 model years (17-18-19-20). Gonna' find out someday.
 
*Thanks Satin Silver for the link - that is my recent UOA I recently posted and I will state again that was with 1 qrt. of make up oil added over the 3,800 miles of easy suburban driving 40 minute one drives to work and back with little short tripping or stop & go driving included . Yes , soot was present in noticeable amounts as well as the smell of fuel dilution when changing the oil (although within acceptable limits according to WIX). My advice with a Hyundai / Kia GDI non - turbo engine is no more than 5K OCI's and if a turbo then back that down to 4K miles max (rounded off miles for easy remembering). Lastly , I agree with Satin Silver : "Shorter OCI's with that engine" plus keep the oil level on the full mark always !!
Originally Posted by SatinSilver
Here's a recent UOA after just 3800 miles. I'd stick with a shorter oci with that engine.

https://www.bobistheoilguy.com/foru...ai-sonata-2-4l-gdi-qsud-5w20-3-800-miles
 
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