A little FYI

[nuskool]

Yahoo being my home page, I opened the web a few minutes ago and this was the feature story.

Mind you the article says nothing about petrolium vs. synthetic. So I will add my 2 cents here.
It says that the reason for shorter oil change interval for short trips is because the oil doesn't get warmed up b4 the engine gets shut down again. It is important to understand that this mainly only applies to petrolium oils. One of the biggest advantages of synthetic is that it maintains a very consistant viscosity throughout the entire temp. range of the engine.

In most cases (certainly not all) the manufacturers recommendations are referring to petrolium oils. YOu can add a few thousand miles if your using a quality synthetic (key word is "quality")
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Like-the-55-Chevy-the-nytimes-3825041162.html?x=0&mod=pf-family-home

[Colin255]

Cars can make it to 300K too easy these days. Change your oil less often to keep the UAW strong...

[nuskool]

LOL, that's funny, but still doesn't work

Look up the million mile van. He's an Amsoil dealer that changed every 35,000 miles or so and the engine lasted to somewhere around 930,000 miles before it died. And even then it was determined that oil was NOT the cause of the failure.

He uses Amsoil ATF and the trans has never been rebuilt and is now over the million mile mark.

[Jasonspeed`]

I think most of us would fall into the severe driving category. I think you should really do changes at intervals that you feel comfortable with since you are the driver. I agree that if you are doing a lot of highway cruising you can wait longer versus someone who does a lot of short trips with constant starting and stopping. You drive your car so you probably know best when it's time.

[JDL1527]

Oil is cheap, motors are not, nuff said.

[oddballmazda]

I change the oil on my suby every 6 or 7 thousand. Just rolled over 200,000 and is running strong. Manufacture recommendation is every 7,500.

[slowgls]

i change my oil every 3k or so.

[nuskool]

I change @ about 13-14k, Have done so since I bought the car at 66k miles. Now have 120k. Runs strong and burns about 1/2 qt. throughout the whole 13-14k mile change interval.

Oil is cheap? Not the stuff I buy. Just over $50.00 for oil and filter at dealer pricing. Considering I drive 20k a year, I'm saving a considerable amount of $ and I know for an absolute fact that my engine is protected. Besides that, how many people do you know that have destroyed their engine because they weren't good about changing the oil? It's actually very rare. The more common problem is oil burning rather than the engine being destroyed.

Severe? I drive less than 100 miles a year on the track. After that, the majority of my driving is on the highway. So doing the math, I don't consider that to be severe.

Also in my wifes CTS it has an oil life monitor which uses an algorithm to determine when the oil is bad. Her driving is probably 60% hwy, 40% city and that thing will go about 12k b4 it suggests an oil change. I would assume they are basing that on the recommended Mobil One. Car has 100,000 mile factory warranty. I don't think they would program the OLM to those specs if they were worried about destroying engines.

It's kinda funny really, some of the comments here are just confirming what the article said about breaking old habits. Still changing the oil like our dads did even though all the information we have tells us that it just isn't necessary to change it every 3000 miles (or even 5000 miles for that matter)