Price because of oil type

[DavieGravy]

Originally posted by Seraph


You do know that european cars last longer than the US made cars right?

Absolutely, but European residents themselves only expect to get 100k out of the vehicles they own, whether those vehicles are Japanese, European, or American.
The reason I know this is because I'm English and most of my relatives, who have all told me this, live in European countries.
Seems as though there may be a direct relationship between the vehicle life expectancy in Europe and their 10k oil changing intervals.
Just a thought.

[Seraph]

Originally posted by DavieGravy

Absolutely, but European residents themselves only expect to get 100k out of the vehicles they own, whether those vehicles are Japanese, European, or American.
The reason I know this is because I'm English and most of my relatives, who have all told me this, live in European countries.
Seems as though there may be a direct relationship between the vehicle life expectancy in Europe and their 10k oil changing intervals.
Just a thought.

I don't have any proof but the 100k and the 10k oil change is not related IMO. Yeah it probably as some minor cause to the 100k lifespan but with the better oils and better design engines, most engines WILL live past 150k easy and many will live past 500k if you do regular maintenance. Another thing is that European roads are better than the road in the US (at least in Chicago area) -- and we are not talking about the roads in the British countryside but more alongs the lines of the Autobahn, which are constructed much better with more thoughts in them.

Most of the new 02/03 cars that UN buys (majority of them are European -- Fiats, Volvos, VWs for Middle East), the recommended oil change is at 10k. If you look at the climate the cars are located, I'd say change them every 3k but they are changing them every 5-10k and majority of the cars are living past 5 year lifespan (yeah they do have morons who do not know how to drive).

But it is true that most Europeans buys cars which are meant to last at most 5 years and are tossed out where in the US, we have cars running into 11th year and running with over 250k miles on them.

In my books, the synth. or regular oil is not the matter but how the car was driven. As long as the driver is not constantly pushing over 3.5k on the REV all the time, the car will last a good while and will be trouble-free. If you keep hitting red-line, even the most expensive and best design block will fail a lot sooner than a Yugo.

L

Originally posted by Seraph
In my books, the synth. or regular oil is not the matter but how the car was driven. As long as the driver is not constantly pushing over 3.5k on the REV all the time, the car will last a good while and will be trouble-free. If you keep hitting red-line, even the most expensive and best design block will fail a lot sooner than a Yugo.

L

I dunno about that... I redlined my Saab 900 every single day of its life, power downshifted it hard enough to chirp the tires backwards on mountain roads, and generally abused the hell out of it as much as possible, while doing regular and expected preventative maintenance.

It was trouble free other than a tranny swap at 170k (typical) and a timing chain replacement at 100k (also typical). The new owner loves it, says it's the smoothest running car he's ever owned and it seems like it just begs to be driven hard.

My SVX has been running much better since I started wringing the hell out of it on mountain roads....

[Seraph]

I was talking about most normal cars.

[DavieGravy]

It just depends on the car. I did to my Honda what you did to your saab and never had engine trouble. I sold it when it hit 200k, so who knows what happened after that, but in general, revving hard doesn't seem like a good idea if you do it all the time.
Although some of the older Hondas were high RPM loving engines, more so than the SVX. I don't know if that would be a factor or not.

[Beav]

Yeah, y'all keep believing that 10k mile crap and I'll keep making money, hand over fist. I'm glad to see that there are still self-proclaimed experts that know more than the people that have to fix their screw-ups. Try pulling the extended oil change program on a Chrysler 2.7 and you'll find out how stupid that idea was in less than 30k miles. Problem is once you find out you probably won't be ready and willing to admit it was your fault, you'd rather blame it on the car or something/someone else.

Funny how tall of a soapbox I'll climb up on for just two cents.

[DavieGravy]

Does that go for Europeans also? Do they really use better oil or are they a bunch of idiots?

[immortal_suby]

Same story here as the saab - beat the living crap outta the little red wagon but changed the oil at least at 3k - sometimes sooner if I had nothing better to do on a weekend. It's still running strong. Synthetic and 3k changes on the svx make me feel a little better each time the needle goes into the red. I'm not going to buy a performance car then drive it like a camry - I'm going to drive it hard and do the necessary PM to hopefully keep it running at that level and enjoy it fully.

Having lived in several different European countries, I'm not so sure that I can agree with some of the posts in this thread. Everyone seems to be talking about engine oil life. My European experience revolved around the structural intergrity of the chassis instead of the engine and frequency of oil changes. This is based on amount of road salt used during winter season. I have seen fairly new model year vehicles taken out of service due to corrision, not engine life.

I qualify this opinion based on countries where I lived. Holland, for example, is extremely concerned with the chassis. Why? They use a lot of road salt during winter season. More corrosion issues rather than mechanical issues. You can only have certain chassis repairs made before your vehicle is taken out of service and crushed.

Just thought I would share this with other forum members.

[LarryIII]

Let me add my 2 cents to this thread. I change the oil at 3,000 miles on all 4 cars. I use Mobil 1. The local PEP Boys has Mobil 1 at $4.89 per quart. They love me at my local PEP boys store.
I don't know if this is the most efficient, cost saving, most bang for the buck, way of doing it. I'll let you all know in about 250,000 to 300,000 miles.