12 month Interval on oil ?

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Curious as to how bad oil could get in 12 months with really light use ? Has anyone ever sent a lab sample on low mileage/low hour oil after a year or so?

I know oil holds contaminants but does it really go bad with time ? If it still looks clear is it ok to leave longer than 6 or 12 months?
 
Son bought a TDI Mustang with 52k … dumped 4 year old M1 in it for a short run to 55k and then will start 5k easy to remember OCI's … I'm not sure how good that old dusty jug was … but it will do that for sure …
Half way poured I looked in the bottom … no visible fall out … but gave it a shake for grins …
 
I had a very good UOA running 17 year old oil in my Elantra....I really don't think that oil has a 'shelf life' but does sometimes need to
be stirred to reintroduce settled additives.....it also gets superseded by newer spec. oil...
 
2 years in use is totally fine assuming you have some UOA/evidence to show there's no fuel and water issues...
 
Originally Posted by jdw1222
Curious as to how bad oil could get in 12 months with really light use ? Has anyone ever sent a lab sample on low mileage/low hour oil after a year or so?

I know oil holds contaminants but does it really go bad with time ? If it still looks clear is it ok to leave longer than 6 or 12 months?

Still good, if your use and vehicle is on-par with national average.
Other than that, you told us nothing about the oil, vehicle or engine used. You left-out all the juicy stuff that creates a multitude of discussions.
This topic has the potential to reach 100 replies. Wait - that's too many.... maybe 25.
 
I think with really light use, no short trips, you can keep the oil for a year for sure. I have 4 90s cars all of them run about 2500 kilometers a year, I change the oil once a year in all of them. But I avoid short trips. I've been making this for years, even with conventional oil, no varnishes no sludge at all.
 
Originally Posted by 77Se7en
Originally Posted by jdw1222
Curious as to how bad oil could get in 12 months with really light use ? Has anyone ever sent a lab sample on low mileage/low hour oil after a year or so?

I know oil holds contaminants but does it really go bad with time ? If it still looks clear is it ok to leave longer than 6 or 12 months?

Still good, if your use and vehicle is on-par with national average.
Other than that, you told us nothing about the oil, vehicle or engine used. You left-out all the juicy stuff that creates a multitude of discussions.
This topic has the potential to reach 100 replies. Wait - that's too many.... maybe 25.


How do you sleep at night.....my God his oil might only be at 99.7% when it could be at 99.95%.....
 
Originally Posted by Yah-Tah-Hey
Spring and fall. Been following this schedule so long I can't stop. Guess it's something for and old *@#$ to do.


Yes and its easy to keep track of April and October. Not to hot not to cold and not raining that defines when I do my OCI.
 
Originally Posted by philipp10
Originally Posted by 77Se7en
Originally Posted by jdw1222
Curious as to how bad oil could get in 12 months with really light use ? Has anyone ever sent a lab sample on low mileage/low hour oil after a year or so?

I know oil holds contaminants but does it really go bad with time ? If it still looks clear is it ok to leave longer than 6 or 12 months?

Still good, if your use and vehicle is on-par with national average.
Other than that, you told us nothing about the oil, vehicle or engine used. You left-out all the juicy stuff that creates a multitude of discussions.
This topic has the potential to reach 100 replies. Wait - that's too many.... maybe 25.


How do you sleep at night.....my God his oil might only be at 99.7% when it could be at 99.95%.....

I slept well - thank you.
In reference to your reply, I'm speechless. I don't know what your figures mean or represent.
Care to PM me? We will discuss my non-sleep apnea there. Not here please.
 
Originally Posted by jdw1222
Curious as to how bad oil could get in 12 months with really light use ? Has anyone ever sent a lab sample on low mileage/low hour oil after a year or so?

I know oil holds contaminants but does it really go bad with time ? If it still looks clear is it ok to leave longer than 6 or 12 months?

Define "light use." Doing frequent short trips where the oil doesn't get a chance to get up to normal temp and stay there a while is going to be more stressful than doing longer trips once in a while.

Without short tripping, 12 months should be very easy to do. Do a UOA if you're worried, just to put your mind at ease.
 
That's what I was driving at Peter. We know nothing about jdw's circumstances.
But Phil probably knows. I am 99.7% to 99.95% sure he does.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I run my Camaro about 1000 miles a year.
I change oil every 3 years.
My heirs have been instructed to do a teardown inspection and report to BITOG after I croak.
 
Originally Posted by Quattro Pete
Originally Posted by jdw1222
Curious as to how bad oil could get in 12 months with really light use ? Has anyone ever sent a lab sample on low mileage/low hour oil after a year or so?

I know oil holds contaminants but does it really go bad with time ? If it still looks clear is it ok to leave longer than 6 or 12 months?

Define "light use." Doing frequent short trips where the oil doesn't get a chance to get up to normal temp and stay there a while is going to be more stressful than doing longer trips once in a while.

Without short tripping, 12 months should be very easy to do. Do a UOA if you're worried, just to put your mind at ease.

+1. One of my vehicles is going on 19 months. I have no worries, it is driven at least 25 miles or more, 95% of the time I use it. I dump the oil every 5K miles regardless of time in service.
 
nascarnation wrote:
I run my Camaro about 1000 miles a year.
I change oil every 3 years.
My heirs have been instructed to do a teardown inspection and report to BITOG after I croak.


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Our Living Wills state our two daughters must change our two Korean vehicle oils and filters very 3.75k, after we croak.

No eating allowed inside those vehicles either. But we do welcome / encourage, throwing buttered popcorn over our graves.
 
FYI, this is what short tripping looks like under the valve cover:
[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]



This was after 11 months and about 4K miles on oil.

Although, granted, changing oil is not going to make this mess magically go away. Need to spend good amount of time at high temp to burn it off.
 
Many people run oil for 2 years or longer but they don't usually go 2 years right off the bat. Maybe they've done it in other vehicles with good results. Or maybe on their vehicle they've already done 16 months, or 20 months, and now they are comfortable going even longer. My concern would be oxidation, which has a time factor. Oil sealed in a bottle is only exposed to that small amount of air sealed inside the bottle. Oil inside an engine is not only whipped around tremendously, but it's exposed to constant airflow through the PCV system.
 
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