Mind your intervals...

60,000 miles with no oil change?

The result

http://forums.bimmerforums.com/forum/showthread.php?t=1281659

Umm, yeah.

I see similar at honda all the time...well 30k intervals. "You mean to say I have to get my oil changed every 3-5k miles?" Awesome!

I like when he told another poster that the reason his buddy didn't change the oil until 60K was "not important".

I translated that as, "Because my friend is astonishingly dumb."

Yeesh. That post would make me leery of buying a used BMW.

Me: Nice car, when was the last oil change?

BMWSeller: What's that?

Me: Gottagobye.

FindlaySpeedMan wrote: I like when he told another poster that the reason his buddy didn't change the oil until 60K was "not important". I translated that as, "Because my friend is astonishingly dumb." Yeesh. That post would make me leery of buying a used BMW.

That's an odd conclusion. There are idiots who drive all makes and models. At least this engine seems to have survived such abuse and is now running very well after having been cleaned and flushed. Obviously this situation is extreme. It annoys me a bit when folks make noise on the internets about BMW's extended service intervals, considering that they also run nearly double the oil volume of some engines, use very large, effective filters, and are filled with only synthetic oils at the factory and dealer. Given those factors, a 10k oil change interval is just fine. 60k, not so much.

Alright, fair enough, anybody could be dumb enough to let oil go that long, no reason to malign BMW, who obviously engineered well. At least Beemer owners can afford oil changes.

I guess it's the remembering-to-do them part that vexes those owners.

I can see the remembering bit being extremely hard, given that BMWs since the late eighties have those neat service indicator lights that go green ... green ... yellow ... red and so on. I dunno about you but I tend to have a look when I see red lights on the dashboard.

The classic one I came across was on a non-car forum where someone was ranting about how servicing a car was a massive rip-off and that a car should last forever without any attention anyway. Her point to back this up was that she'd been driving her Honda Civic for something like 60k-70k without any service or oil change "and it's still running as well as it is when I got it".

An E46 like that one has a miles until service indication that shows on the dash display for a few seconds on startup, and that's all. Easily ignored by the ignorant.

That thread is a testament to the value of synthetic oils and the toughness of BMW inline 6s. My '99 328i was still running smoothly and powerfully at 180k miles when I sold it to upgrade to my 7.

Yeah.... I can tell you honda's don't last that long. 17k is their magic number.

I'm not real sure when i last changed the oil on the Celica. I think.... April? So probably 12k ago. Meh. I hope that motor blows.

A friend of mine once said: "I dont like this car, thats why I dont put oil in it"

oh I love how at the end of the thread some people are giving great advice "oil leaks may start to present themselves" "you really need to rebuild as smaller oil passages wont show up on the oil pressure indicator" and the OP comes back with "problem is solved get out of this thread"