oil change interval
 

So with the whole lockdown thing, I haven't been driving the Z very much. It's been 10 months since the oil was changed but I only have about 1500 miles on this oil. I have heard various people say you can push an oil change out to a year but I have also heard engine oil breaks down over time. Does anyone out there have a Z that they don't put much miles on and stretch the oil change interval past the recommended 6 months?

I change my own oil/filter once a year. I only put on less than 2K miles a year on average, though.

Every 3k miles. Even if it's synthetic it's been sitting in the earth for a billion years, it ain't gonna break down if you leave in an engine for a year.

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YOU DON'T KNOW THAT! :eekdance:

I change every 4,000 miles. I put less then 4,000 on a year. So every winter, I change oil.

Oil does break down sitting in a bottle on the shelf. Ever open up a bottle and have chunks come out. :icon14: :rofl2:

Amsoil top of the line. 1 time a year. I doubt I even put 1k on it in a year?

Is an oil change every 6 months really that much of a hassle? If you can't be bothered enough to do an oil change more than once a year, I'm guessing you don't have time to drive the car either, which begs the question, why do you even have it...

Same here. I use synthetic and change my oil once a year prior to winter storage. I only put about 3k Kms a year on mine.

PS: Every oil will eventually have its constituents break down and separate over time in storage. But we are talking over a decade, not months. A lot of luxury brands have already gone to 1 year oil changes. Nissan is one of the last remaining manufacturers requiring 6-month oil changes.

When you have 5 vehicles to keep up, yeah.

Bike - 4 quarts.

Grand Cherokee - 6 quarts.

Z - 6 quarts.

Power Wagon - 7 quarts.

Motorhome - 5 gallons. YES...GALLONS.

That's a lot of oil in a year. 10 gallons and 3 quarts for one oil change for my fleet. :icon14:

I use Euro spec 0w-40 Abiotic Oil in all gas engines. In the diesel, I use the Diesel spec Abiotic Oil. The best there is. :tup:

:rolleyes: I've never heard you complain about oil changes lol

Better than replacing the fan blade on your motorhome :eekdance:


And which one of those vehicles do you drive less than 1K miles in a year? My guess is none :driving:



I was just asking the question to try and understand. I'm not about to sit here and judge someone's choices for their toys. To each their own :tup:

I forgot to add the 4 quarts for the diesel generator in the motorhome, plus the oil for the lawn mower, rotor tilter, portable generator, shredder, weed eater, chain saw, snow blower. That's another 3 gallons. Total 13 gallons, and 3 quarts. :icon14:

13 gallons over how much time?? Let's say you do each one 5 times in a year. We're talking almost 5 gallons of oil per month. Holy ****!! How do you manage?? :rolleyes:

With a wooden spoon.

Everything get changed once a year. The truck might get 2 oil changes because I put more miles on it.

Why would you change oil, especially oil designed to go 7-10k between changes, (AMSOIL Signature is 25k or 1 year oil) every 6 months? That is completely idiotic and wasteful. Hell, even every 3k miles with the synthetics we have today is stupid. This isn't 1980. I already have vehicles I drive every day, including a Harley. I only drive 2 miles to work, so, NO, I'm not driving my Z to work every night so it can sit there. Why do I have my car? Because I CAN. I can afford it. I can afford it sitting in my garage as well. I enjoy driving it a few times a week.

lol calm down killer :)

I was simply asking a question in response to the OP which specifically mentioned 6 month recommended OCI. I wasn't even referring to the mileage interval...

And driving it a few times a week does not beg the question why do you have the car :rolleyes:

Changing modern synthetic oil every 3-4k miles is just plain uninformed and a waste of money. Unless you are tracking your 370z, there is no reason to do this.

A good oil and filter will hold up for 5-7.5k miles under hard street driving conditions provided you let the car warm up properly and don't excessively idle the engine.

Go look at some oil reports on bobistheoilguy forum and you will see there is absolutely no need for these non-sense recommendations.

I change my tuned 15' Nismo oil at around 5k-7k depending on how hard I've been driving and the temperatures it's been experiencing. I used to use the magical Nissan ester oil until about 35k miles, then switched to mobil 1 and I don't know any excessive VVEL noise. Speaking of the Nissan ester oil, that is not a full synthetic -- so if you are running that I would change it at 5k, but it's not worth the price.

To end things, the oil filter does more of a job then the oil brand itself. Make sure you get a top of the line filter and you'll be insured that all the garbage is sticking inside there.

The same gentlemen who said change your oil at 3k here, told someone in the classified forums that his v2 nismo front wheels were out of specification. A simple google search would have shown him he was incorrect. Let's do a little research before recommending people bad advice.

Mileage is not the only factor that should be considered when determining a proper OCI. Once a year is a good rule of thumb especially if the car is not driven much. The OP asked specifically about time interval.

This feels like a dig at me... I'm guessing you are referring to that typo where I accidentally said 255 instead of 245 :rolleyes:

And where did I say 3K mile OCI in this thread? :shakes head:

Dang after 10 years we are still discussing oil!!!

You got to love this forum it never aged!:tup:

I bet there's someone out there who has yet to change the oil on their 2009 :rock:

The tire size was a mistake, but I wouldn’t judge him for that. He’s very knowledgeable about the Z34 and has contributed much here.

Oil change is cheap insurance. I do 5k km's oci (3k miles). Redline 5w30.
There is no harm in changing early/often. YOUR money.

Most oil gets recycled (if you dispose properly! god knows who wouldn't) and repurposed into no-label oil for those that don't give a rats ***.

I do store car for winter with fresh oil that sits 6-7 months. The good folks at REDLINE told me there are no issues with water retention on their oils during periods of inactivity, specially if oil is fresh.

Oil analysis is individual, and is intended for long term monitoring on SAME engine and environment. All those reports on BITOG are useless to rest of us. Often misleading.

I have never heard of an engine being destroyed by a certain BRAND of oil. Only by misuse and neglect.

Thats my research.

A side note. Gas turbine engines in Aircraft don't get oil changes. Only the components. The "engine" oil is just topped up. The components often use the same oil, but are changed because of the conditions they operate in. Being mostly high level synthetics.

Oil analysis gets done if there are problems, (debris etc) but I haven't pulled a sample in over 20 years.

Air cooled VW engines and Quaker State oil was a bad combination. The oil would sludge up in the heads. Everytime a person would come in with engine problem. The first question we would ask would be what oil they used. If they said Quaker State. We knew the engine had to come apart.

I've never changed the oil in my Z. Just top it off when it gets kinda low.

Hang 10!

Back in the day before Bell Telephone got broken up into smaller companies. (Verizon, AT&T, etc) Their maintenance on their vans would be to change the oil filter and top the oil off. Never changed the oil in their vans. They would get rid of the vans when they hit 100,000 miles on the clock. Used to see the vans up for auction all the time.

100k miles back then... that's solid mileage back in the day. Wonder how they performed after auction?

Old Dodge vans with a slant 6 would run forever.

True! I had an A100 way back then... Was our knock about surf van. A lot of them had the slant 6. Great engine. Mine, however, had the 5.2 right under my right elbow. LoL! That van sure held some skeletons!!!!

Good old 318. :tup:

I make sure to apply oil every intervals of 4 cycles of pumping rectal spatula to make sure no boring of the cylindrical walls of your colon!!

Im not sure if the oil thread question is for colonoscopy? :ugh2:

I use Mobil 1 synthetic and change oil once a year. I drive about 10,000 miles per year in my Z. I send an oil sample to Blackstone Labs for analysis. It always comes back that the oil is essentially as new. There's no coolant, fuel or metal contamination. The analysis only costs $30 and gives me assurance that the oil and engine are in good shape.

I disagree with that wholeheartedly. JAR hoards parts and is personally responsible for the upper oil pan shortage. :stirthepot:

What does this even mean??? :rofl2:

Think what he means is. Bend over and grab your ankles. On every 4th stroke in. He will add lube to keep from reaming you out too big. Biting the pillow is an option.

Oh, how considerate of Zoren! :icon14:

Nah...... he'll give you a reach around. That's what Betty told me.

Hey, at 53, I'll take what i can get. :tup:

Only if the bottle's full of milk