Hello Scotty
I live in South Africa, and I own a 2017 VW Polo Maxx 1.6 16v with 35000km (+-22 000miles) on it.
I recently started a job where I am sitting in a lot of city traffic for around 30 mins twice per day. As I am concerned for the health of my engine, would replacing my oil on a 7 500km interval (4 600miles) be damaging to the engine? The actual service interval for the car is every 15 000km (9 375Miles).
My concern is, will doing these regular intervals hurt my engine? As the car has such low mileage on it, I am trying to keep it running for as long as possible.
thanks
Sean
No, it won't hurt anything, and that is close to the 5000 mile change intervals that are generally recommended for best engine longevity. (It's the 9000+ mile change interval that may cause long-term problems.)
I highly recommend a new PCV valve with each oil change. It's cheap insurance.
I am not totally certain if my car has a PCV valve. Will check
No, as long as whoever is doing the oil change does it correctly each time.
The only downside to more frequent service (besides expense) is that every time you do something, there is the potential to do it incorrectly. But as long as you are careful, more frequent is better.
Obviously, too frequent oil changes will wear out your car´s oil drain plug thread faster, and also the respective oil pan thread. If you change your oil filter each time you do an oil change, the car parts involved - and even the tools used - will also suffer more intensive wear 🙂
In my part of the world, buying fake oil is one of the risks car owners have to consider. The higher your oil changes frequency - the higher the risk of buying fake oil.
As has already been mentioned by DayWalker, the risks of doing some sort of a mistake (and humans do make mistakes from time to time) will also become higher.
Anyways, these risks are of course minor. As far as the suggested oil change frequency is conserned, when I was doing my tests on fully synthetic oils, in my cars, and talking about purely in-city driving, I could notice no reduction of any noteworthy oil parameters before 8500 km (ca. 5300 miles) or more - even with turbocharger. That is why I am doing - and have been doing for 20+ years - all my oil changes every 8500 km (or every year, for the car I am using less frequently - whatever occurs first).
Fake oil? What were they using instead of real oil?
Instead of what is written on the can, they sometimes sell all kind of crap - something oil-like, but possibly not even intended for cars. Third-world problems, sort of 🙁
oil is the lifeblood of your engine. it lubricates everything and helps to disapate heat so the sooner you change it, the better. as far as I am concerned 5000 miles is the absolute longest I would go. 3 or 4 is better. just my opinion.
Thanks for the feedback ! As the car has just had a service, I will probably drain oil the trashy VW oil and put in something that I trust more. We have a supplier here called Indy Oil, and they make really highly certified engine oil. Used in my dads Scirocco R and that engine is clean as can be.
Hi guys,
Thanks for the fast and helpful replies.. I was concerned that doing it too frequently would cause some type of damage. I should have noted that the engine is naturally aspirated, with no type of forced induction unfortunately.
Sadly had problems with one of my Alfa's, as I ran bearings due to the Alfa dealership putting the wrong oil in it and basically caused me to throw the entire car away. As we have quite a large selection of oils available in SA, I am probably going to go for Shell oil and do filter too. Is doing filter every 7 500km necessary, or only when the dealer changes the oil at 15 000km?
In my part of the world, buying fake oil is one of the risks car owners have to consider.
I am seeing this more often, now that we are importing more and more oils in from other countries. We have a refinery here for Shell and Petronas (Called Engen in my country), and I am noticing more fake oils available at these small part stores at unbelievable prices. I simply cannot trust these brands, as I do not know where they come from.
No, it won't hurt anything, and that is close to the 5000 mile change intervals that are generally recommended for best engine longevity.
Thanks for the feedback. What makes it far worse, is that VW's have this new design of one piston ring instead of the usual 3 rings per piston. This scares me, as this engine is still new now, but what is going to happen in 150 000km? Failure? We had an old Golf 4 1.6 and it put on 255 000km before it started to smoke (and not even a lot. Just upon cold start up).
Modern VWs are unfortunately not really built to last. So if you intend to keep your car as long as possible, you might want to consider getting a different car for that. Sorry for having to say that.