"Change Engine Oil Soon" Indicator

The "Change Engine Oil Soon" indicator went off on my wife's 2016 Exploder this morning.

Ford sez' 3K to 5K for conventional and 7.5K to 10K for full synthetic but I don't believe I have any way of telling the car what type of oil I'm running.

So, my question is:  Does the car have some way of knowing the condition of the oil or does it just default so some fixed number?

I'm running Mobil One full synthetic but I didn't record the mileage when I last changed her oil (won't make that mistake again).  

My Mazda just lets me tell it when the next oil change is required;  easy-peasy.

Thank you in advance for any guidance.

They're usually an algorithm based on rpm, run time, miles driven, speed, load etc. Short trips will be shorter intervals, especially in newer  GDI engines.

Not knowing how its driven or how many miles etc it's hard to say how long it can go. But there are ways to find out and I know just the guy that can answer those. 

In reply to bobzilla :

I seem to remember that you picked up an oil certification; correct?

And would "just the guy" be our former Ford engineer...is that Alfadriver? 

3 months or 3000 miles. Oil is cheaper than an engine. Slighlty more for synthetic. This assumes you are useing good products.

In reply to RX Reven' :

No I meant me and testing damnit! lol

Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) said:

3 months or 3000 miles. Oil is cheaper than an engine. Slighlty more for synthetic. This assumes you are useing good products.

and that is an extreme waste of resources on 99% of the vehicles on the road. 

bobzilla said:

Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) said:

3 months or 3000 miles. Oil is cheaper than an engine. Slighlty more for synthetic. This assumes you are useing good products.

and that is an extreme waste of resources on 99% of the vehicles on the road. 

Hey, it was good advice, way before he was old enough to be able to drive!

Yet it's still repeated a lot. 
I haven't been to your site but once since ya started it, and forgot to save the link. Didn't see any bulk discounts at the time... will be interested (4 vehicles all need it) when I get some income coming in. 

Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) said:

3 months or 3000 miles. Oil is cheaper than an engine. Slighlty more for synthetic. This assumes you are useing good products.

Can you even buy "bad" oil anymore? Even the cheapo Walmart brand stuff is made by Warren Labs and tests quite well.

And I agree that the old 3 month/3k mile rule is very excessive. It was invented by oil change shops to create business for themselves. 

bobzilla said:

In reply to RX Reven' :

No I meant me and testing damnit! lol

 

Hahaha, I'm sooo sorry my friend.

I believe there are two independent considerations going on here...

#1  What is the cost/benefit sweet spot for oil changes given the type of oil used and how the vehicle is driven (short cycles, high operating temperatures, etc.)

#2  How does a 2016 Ford Explorer determine that it's time to change the oil.

To add insult to injury, I commented that I believed you had an "oil certification"....I'm sure it's "lubricant certification" indicating they trust you with much more stuff than just oil.

Hey, refer to me as having certifications in "numbers"...I'm allowed to be in possession of integers but I can't preform any operations on them.

Anyway, at most, I changed the oil 5K ago and I'm comfortable with going to 7K as I run full synthetic and  the car lives a pretty easy life.

Please be my guest in plugging your site here unless the mods object.

Thank you everyone! 

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) said:

3 months or 3000 miles. Oil is cheaper than an engine. Slighlty more for synthetic. This assumes you are useing good products.

Can you even buy "bad" oil anymore? Even the cheapo Walmart brand stuff is made by Warren Labs and tests quite well.

And I agree that the old 3 month/3k mile rule is very excessive. It was invented by oil change shops to create business for themselves. 

Non synthetic. Well not necessarily bad but there's absolutely no reason to use it other than maybe as a break in oil in some situations.

3k is way shorter than necessary in all but they most extreme cases. 10k still seems to be a bit much for anything that's run hard at all, especially if it's on a fuel economy spec oil (aka 5w20 or lower viscosity). Most things would probably be fine at 7-8k intervals, I do 5k purely because it's easier to track. No need to write anything down, if the fourth digit of the odometer is a 5 or a 0, it's time.

dps214 said:

Non synthetic...there's absolutely no reason to use it

I'm a big rotor head (FC RX-7, FE RX-8 and now a FB RX-7 = 550K total miles) and I wouldn't dream of putting synthetic in a rotary engine (or anything else that burns oil by design like a 2-Stroke).

This is a great question for our resident lubricant expert Bobzilla...have synthetics been proven to be safe for burn oil by design engines??? 

Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) said:

3 months or 3000 miles. Oil is cheaper than an engine. Slighlty more for synthetic. This assumes you are useing good products.

The best way I have heard it described, is the manufacturer's service interval is the minimum amount of maintenance required to meet warranty requirements.

It depends on if you plan on throwing the car away once it is out of warranty or not.

Tom_Spangler (Forum Supporter) said:

Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) said:

3 months or 3000 miles. Oil is cheaper than an engine. Slighlty more for synthetic. This assumes you are useing good products.

Can you even buy "bad" oil anymore? Even the cheapo Walmart brand stuff is made by Warren Labs and tests quite well.

And I agree that the old 3 month/3k mile rule is very excessive. It was invented by oil change shops to create business for themselves. 

Yes.  You can buy SB rated oil.

You can also buy the wrong spec of oil even though it is "modern".  There is a large difference between, say, Dexos rated oil (I cannot remember the code numbers) and VW 502.xx rated oils, and you can wreck the engine if you don't use the right oil.  Heck, Motorcraft Diesel oil specified by Ford does not even have an API rating, just Ford's.  (I use it in my RX-7 because it is probably very low ash to keep DPFs happy.  Also pretty inexpensive)

Meanwhile, chadly whiteblock Volvos just specify "eh, as long as it is 5W30, it's good."  No HPFP, no roller rockers, no timing chains and guides... 

bobzilla said:

Gearheadotaku (Forum Supporter) said:

3 months or 3000 miles. Oil is cheaper than an engine. Slighlty more for synthetic. This assumes you are useing good products.

and that is an extreme waste of resources on 99% of the vehicles on the road. 

How?  

How much energy does it cost to refine, oh, let's say 3x the amount of engine oil over the car's life, which amounts to less than one barrel of oil, versus how much energy is spent making a new car after the old one is thrown away early.

Do note that used oil is not disposed of.  It is a valuable feedstock.  When we were shopping around to buy some for our waste oil heater in a lean year, we found that it cost as much as home heating oil.  Which also cost about the same per BTU as natural gas.  This is not by accident: that used oil gets used for all sorts of different things in industry.  If it did not exist, "virgin" petroleum would take its place, so no net difference except refining costs. 

Of course, for a shop without a waste oil furnace, the value of the oil gets neatly negated by the cost of having someone haul it away 

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

The best way I have heard it described, is the manufacturer's service interval is the minimum amount of maintenance required to meet warranty requirements.

Honestly, that sounds a little harsh to me.

Manufactures must be aware that they can sell more cars and/or charge a higher premium if they have a reputation for quality which, among other things, includes how long their cars last.

We all watch commercials where manufactures tout that more of their cars are on the road after XXX years or miles than their competition.

The "Toyota Tax" is well understood...their cars hold their value better than other brands because they tend to be more reliable long after the warrantee expires.  As a result, the lease rates are reduced and customers that buy their cars know the trade-in or private sale values will be higher.

Putting myself in the place of an automotive company's CEO, I'd call for oil changes to be set based on the best cost / benefit ratio for my customers.

Of course, I'm not an expert but why would a company hurt their reputation by recommending longer than optimal oil change intervals?

I mean, I've never heard a company say "buy our car rather than the competition because you don't have to change the oil as often"; never.

Hopefully Bobzilla will chime in on if we should change our oil more frequently than recommended by manufacturers.

Bottom Line:  If the manufacturer says 7Kto 10K on full synthetic, I change at 6K to 7K knowing my cars have a relatively easy life (long freeway trips, low load, moderate temperature, low dust).

Bob man, am I messing up???

In reply to RX Reven' :

On the other hand, the place where I got that phrase was on a teardown of a Toyota engine (2GR-FE?) that died before its time because the owner believed the salesman when he said the car only needed an oil change every 10k miles.  The bores were wiped out and the engine was burning a quart of oil every 200-300 miles.  BUT:  It made it out of warranty, and it failed after the car was paid off.  That's "good 'nuf" engineering.

Manufactuers absolutely do tout long OCIs as a sales pitch because it means the car needs to be taken in for service less often.  People like going to the dentist more than they like taking their car in for service per industry studies.  If Company A says "bring it to us every three months" and company B says "bring it to us every 18 months", people will choose the latter.

Look at BMW.  They have OCIs in the 15-20k mile range.  They have absolutely horrible record, amongst us off-the-end-of-the-bell-curve types, for reliability for various factors not necessarily related to OCIs but in general.  But the people who lease them for three years then trade in for a new one love them.

To the best of my knowledge, no vehicle manufacturer tests the actual oil.  That would require gas chromatographs, refractive spectrometers, and other really expensive stuff.  As Bobzilla says, it's based on a complex map based on oil temps, air temps, drive cycles, accelerator position, miles, time, etc.

I've had several cars with the change oil algoithm.  I change my oil every 4-5k for mineral oil and 6-7k for synthetic, unless the change oil light comes on before that which would indicate that I've been driving it hard enough to warrant a change.   On the van (06 chevy) I'm currently at 6k with a summer full of towing 3500 lbs worth of boat and the light hasn't come on yet, but I'm going to change next week.

I believe the 65 Corvair manual suggest 3000 miles but 1500 mile filter changes!  The oil must have be super "gloggy" back then (I think it was more about the ability to hold particulates).  I know oil technology is wildly better these days.

aircooled said:

I believe the 65 Corvair manual suggest 3000 miles but 1500 mile filter changes!  The oil must have be super "gloggy" back then (I think it was more about the ability to hold particulates).  I know oil technology is wildly better these days.

I wonder if thats a function of the Corvair being aircooled.  I'd bet they followed VW and used oil for cooling for part of it, and that heat cooks the oil.

The manual on my '67 Mustang says 5,000 mile changes, IIRC.

There are tons of factors in how quickly oil degrades.  The reason old-school cars recommended 3000 miles was about 20% because the oil was not as good and 80% because the old machining and metallurgy was not so bueno.  Hard to prevent blowby contamination when you have cast iron rings, older casting tech, and manual boring and honing machines coupled with manual/analog measuring devices.  Today's powerplant engineering is so far ahead of something like a flathead V8 that you can't blame the oil.

Air cooled motors will tend to have a wider operating temp range also (run a bit colder for longer, and can get a lot hotter), so I am sure that is not easy on oil.  Also one of the reasons they are hard to get them to meet smog regs.

The VW's also needed more oil changes because the didn't have freakin' oil filters (just a rather porous screen, kind of like some oil pickups)

Carbs are also going to tend to contaminate the oil a bit more.

Having seen the inside of BMW engines that followed the schedule set by the algorithm - with the input of a high tech oil quality sensor, among other things - I just do every 5k miles and enjoy knowing that mine won't look like that.

In reply to RX Reven' :

Info in the website is more for information. Email and facebook groups are the fastest way to get to me. 

Racer's Oil Analysis Resource is the website I currently have set up. Facebook Group

Now, to some of the questions: Yes, you can buy bad oil. There's a group that goes out and has these tested and there are quite a few oils you can pick up at places like the dollar store or gas stations that are just terrible. 

Synthetic oils can be burned, but the impacts are the same as any at this point to catalysts, etc. Many/most "synthetic oils now are no longer pure synthetics but highly refined conventional "dino oil" that meets the requirement to be called a synthetic. 

There's nothing wrong with conventional oils and no reason to not use them. They are less expensive than even the cheaper "Synthetic" oils and can still save you money overall. Yes, even they can usually be used well past the 3month/3k intervals set out by oil change places.

The waste of resources I am referring to are more related to the end user like us that changes our own oil, but also applies to people paying to have it changed. There are around 90 million registered vehicles on the road in the US. If only half of those are driven on a regular basis and they hold 5 quarts average, that means every year 135 million gallons of oil is changed. Move that to 6 months and you save 20 million gallons of oil used. I'm far far far from a tree hugging environmentalist, but that is a lot of used oil and at current prices that is a lot of wasted money, $40-50M per year.

In reply to dps214 :

" No need to write anything down, if the fourth digit of the odometer is a 5 or a 0, it's time."

That is exactly what I do for myself and my In Laws.  No guessing or needing to write anything down.

So I never came across how the oil service life light was calculated. I wish I did, but I do think it evolved over my 30 years. 
 

The intervals seem to more match the target consumption rate- as +10k per quart is pretty much required for at least 150k miles.