Oil Filter every 10,000 miles is overkill?

[oilhammer]

Maybe because Vw doesn’t offer a motorcycle.
Besides, who are you to question why someone else owns anything they own?

Well, they sorta do, actually. Ducati, which is under Lamborghini stewardship, under the Audi brand, which is of course part of Volkswagen. So....

 

[TDI Greg]

Maybe because Vw doesn’t offer a motorcycle.
Besides, who are you to question why someone else owns anything they own?

No offence bro, I didn't see that he was talking about a motorcycle.

But why are we comparing motorcycles to cars? Hey my weed wacker never needs an oil change. Talk about cheap maintenance.

 

[Mongler98]

If Honda is so great why do you have a VW?

seirously? not this time, you aint baiting me! that's for me and my wife to do! BAITIN
no seriously, i got my motorcycle becuase that was the one i wanted, not because honda, not for any other reason other than its awesome and my flavor of taste!
i HAD a vw becuase 45mpg and a diesel was interesting to me and well, rabit hole i adventure would be the title of that chapter of my life.
and yes that is a 2019 718 in the back of the picture.

 

[Mrrogers1]

I usually do the once a year change on my cars which is anywhere from 12 to 25,000 miles. I use Delvac and Mobil One 0-40. How about a car that only does 7k miles in a year and most of the mileage is in the city doing short hop trips? Is that considered severe duty and should I change that?

@oilhammer I would love to hear your opinion on this one. I've found myself in a new position with one of my TDI where it's not getting even 10k in the 1yr mark. I bought a MK6 Golf 6M TDI to drive and gave my MY15 GSW to the wife to drive, she got the "change oil in blah blah days" message and I checked and she's only put about 5k on the wagon in the almost year since last change. I feel like 10k or 365 days makes sense as all the fuel/soot etc collected over a year of mostly city driving might be close to 10k "normal" mixed driving.

Maybe I just just send for analysis since I do have baseline from the first 65k miles of it's life.

 

[oilhammer]

Use your own judgement. If the car gets driven every day, but very short trips, and that is why the time comes up before the mileage does, then you may want to change the oil. If it doesn't get driven every day, or every other day, but on days it does get driven it gets out on the highway, then you may be fine to leave it be.

I do 10k miles on all my stuff (except my F150) and they are all going past one year. I do 20k miles on my primary daily driver and that is LESS than a year's worth of driving typically.

The F150 gets a 5k interval, which is almost two years.

None of my cars get driven many short trips, because I live in the sticks and am 50 miles from everything.

 

[scooperhsd]

I had Honda/Acura CARS that had gone over 200,000 miles before they needed oil check regularly. One of them is STILL on the road (1988 Acura Integra), quite likely as a daily driver - it had 279,000 miles on it when we gave to a friend that wanted it.

 

[Mongler98]

dang guys, lighten up!
and my posts get deleted and accused of trolling
poor OP, Beetle PD just can't seem to catch a break here
never saw it coming
lol honda

 

[Mrrogers1]

Use your own judgement. If the car gets driven every day, but very short trips, and that is why the time comes up before the mileage does, then you may want to change the oil. If it doesn't get driven every day, or every other day, but on days it does get driven it gets out on the highway, then you may be fine to leave it be.

I do 10k miles on all my stuff (except my F150) and they are all going past one year. I do 20k miles on my primary daily driver and that is LESS than a year's worth of driving typically.

The F150 gets a 5k interval, which is almost two years.

None of my cars get driven many short trips, because I live in the sticks and am 50 miles from everything.

Thanks! After looking back on the last UOA I think I'll just pull a sample and see what it looks like. Last run was almost 14k in about 7 months time with Schaeffers 8008 and it was a great report from Blackstone. This new report with about a third of the mileage and about double the time on the oil should be very interesting to see. The trips aren't usually real short but they are nothing like when I commuted with the car and are mostly in town.

Will update here and in UOA thread later when i get it done.

 

[OlyTDI]

I don't see how a filter can become deficient after a certain number of miles.

Perhaps it could eventually become overly clogged with soot and such but clearly those who are running longer intervals are not suffering from oil starvation secondary to clogged filters.

It makes no sense to me that as a filter collects particulates, at some point (magically at 10K miles?) it somehow starts to let said particulates through where previously it hadn't...

 

[Mrrogers1]

I don't see how a filter can become deficient after a certain number of miles.

Perhaps it could eventually become overly clogged with soot and such but clearly those who are running longer intervals are not suffering from oil starvation secondary to clogged filters.

It makes no sense to me that as a filter collects particulates, at some point (magically at 10K miles?) it somehow starts to let said particulates through where previously it hadn't...

I don't think it's that they start to let particulates through but the filter itself may start to fail. The more "stuff" filtered out and trapped in the paper, the more resistant to flow there is. I can see the "resistance" causing oil pump to work harder but a) how much harder or if it could cause a failure, no clue. I can't say that I've ever seen one fail and have done as high as 20k on my MK5 back in the day on Mobil Devac ESP. Now the most I have ran on my MK6 and 7 is 14k and the filter was ok on all of these but the pleats look worse, the longer they go, like the paper looks go be collapsing on itself. Knowing that the boys and gals across the pond have the longer OCI's I'd think we'd be just fine but like the others, it's cheap and if I'm changing the oil, no reason not to just change it out.

 

[jettawreck]

I've always changed the oil at 10k+/- miles but occasionally ran the filter to the next change interval. Poor planning and a few times my stock of on hand was depleted and/or NAPA or O'Reilly's were out of stock (not unusual). I've never had a "clogged" filter or pleats that were collapsing or deformed, even after long(er) replacement intervals. Plenty of folks have been runnining extended change intervals (common in Europe) and not had filter issues when using quality item.

 

[NewTdi]

I feel I am wasting oil by doing 10K oil changes after reading this thread ! twice I did 20K intervals and there was 0 oil comsumption. Most of my miles are highway miles and the shortest drive is 40 miles and the longest 780 miles. In my wagon which is stock I am doing 15000km oil changes which is about every 5 weeks or so. Need to get an oil analysis done one of these days.

 

[Gothmolly]

I go longer than 10k, but only because the car leaks and burns so much, in 10k I've replaced all the oil anyway.

 

[Andyinchville1]

Hi

My last oil change was about 27500 miles . I went a little further than the 25k I was shooting for.

My last oil analysis said I was ok (that was at 20 k interval).

I added about .75 quart in 27.5k miles

I drive alot for work.

 

[jetta 97]

$12 at the dealer... $120 over two years (I drive alot)

You really will complain about it .
You saving at least $1000 in fuel every year driving 50k a year vs your Honda or any mid size gasoline car , Please give a brake.

 

[Mongler98]

I go longer than 10k, but only because the car leaks and burns so much, in 10k I've replaced all the oil anyway.

that's now how that kinda thing works lol. burning that much means your putting a LOT more soot into the oil making much more sludge. do it for too long and you might have a build up in the pan of some nasty stuff. that or you might have a runaway some day.

 

[Gothmolly]

You really will complain about it .
You saving at least $1000 in fuel every year driving 50k a year vs your Honda or any mid size gasoline car , Please give a brake.

who drives 50,000 miles a year??

 

[Mongler98]

who drives 50,000 miles a year??

you... can't.... be .... serious

 

[LabGuy]

Take this for what you paid for it: I run 20-25k oil change intervals and change the factory filter each time.

Sorry, but what exactly do you mean by "factory filter"?

 

[Mrrogers1]

Sorry, but what exactly do you mean by "factory filter"?

I think he just means he uses a VW OEM filter, maybe from the dealer or the other various sources.

 

[OlyTDI]

Yes, that's what I meant: I change the filter in the factory equipped filter housing at that interval...as opposed to the bypass filter which I replace at about 60K.

 

[Andyinchville1]

I've done nearly 27 k on oil and filter with no ill results ....

Oil tested by Blackstone Labs as okay ...

Note : if you see my other thread regarding oil change interval the test came back as a littke thick in viscosity but it's because I made a mistake and thought I was using 5w30 when I was using correct 5w40 oil.

The oil test based on 5 W 40 oil stats which I was using showed to be good in viscosity.... I'll have to find and update the other thread when I get a chance Blackstone sent me a revised oil analysis also based on my providing them my corrected oil viscosity numbers.

 

[oilhammer]

At what point does spending money on labwork eclipse just spending the same money (or less) on just servicing the car as prescribed by the folks that designed and built it?

 

[Andyinchville1]

At what point does spending money on labwork eclipse just spending the same money (or less) on just servicing the car as prescribed by the folks that designed and built it?

Good point about expense of oil analysis but I was also doing longer oci so I don't have to spend the time changing the oil and filter as often... I know it really doesn't take that long to change the oil but I do work a lot so having extra free time is nice.... it's kind of save a little time here save a little time there and end up with a lot more free time overall.

Once I get a good baseline of what I can get away with as far as oci , I may discontinue the lab analysis saving that expense as well but the numbers are interesting to look at and it's not too expensive so quite possible I may just continue getting the reports for the information but just keep the longer oci as a way of saving labor on servicing.

My thinking is if it doesn't need to be changed dont change it just for the sake of changing it.

For what it's worth I do have other vehicles that I drive and my girlfriend drives as well so between all the different vehicles and the two of us extended oci does make a difference time wise ( we typically change engine oil on the gassers about every 10k on factory recommended 5k changes ... ) .

On the flip side, One reason why I think about changing the oil more often in the truck is because after a fresh oil change I like the smell of rotella as it warms up for the first time (the truck has a road draft tube instead of a closed pcv system). ... good times huffing ! ;-)

 

[oilhammer]

I guess my thinking is, a UOA is probably better spent on something that will suck $200+ from your wallet at every service. Or more. Our cars don't do that. And the normal service interval already has (courtesy of countless others who HAVE parted ways with their money) mountains upon mountains of data points that you can go off of already. There really just is nothing "new" here to learn. So why bother? I guess if it is a hobby, but that is a pretty strange hobby... it would seem to be an obsession with a lot of people.

 

[CleverUserName]

A wix oil analysis kit that includes coolant testing, soot and TBN is $10 from Rockauto.com if you buy them 5x at a time. That’s is extremely cheap, there isn’t any reason to not do it unless you’re just lazy or don’t care about what is happening inside you’re engine every 10k miles.

 

[turbobrick240]

The vast majority of tdi owners aren't hypochondriacs about oil condition and seem to get good service life from their engines. Irv Gordon put a gazillion miles on his Volvo without bothering with analysis, afaik. He just followed the prescribed maintenance schedule. I guess the PD tdi's might be one of the few passenger car engines where oil analysis is truly helpful in determining when the cams are starting to go south.

 

[CleverUserName]

The vast majority of tdi owners aren't hypochondriacs about oil condition and seem to get good service life from their engines. Irv Gordon put a gazillion miles on his Volvo without bothering with analysis, afaik. He just followed the prescribed maintenance schedule. I guess the PD tdi's might be one of the few passenger car engines where oil analysis is truly helpful in determining when the cams are starting to go south.

oil analysis is the only way I learned that Liqui Moly Top Tech 4200 is not suitable for 10k miles and incapable of maintaining its alkalinity during the recommended CR 2.0 OCI. That experience really opened my eyes to the value of OA and the poor quality of LM oils. For $50 a gallon and the “made in Germany” label I expected a lot more from it then was delivered.

 

[oilhammer]

Meh, I'll save the $50 and keep on goin'. My current fleet's LOWEST mileage unit is right about 220k miles. And it is 22 years old. And I could roll out customers' cars one after the other with well over that. Heck, even one of my sisters' Siennas has over 300k.

 

[redbarron55]

You are standing right there when you change to oil so why not the filter?
I use an extractor and the filter is on top so...
You will never know when the bypass opens and unfiltered oil is being pumped so why take a chance?
Lots of possible downside for little up side benefit.