"How often should you change the oil in your engine? On most new vehicles, the factory recommended interval for changing the oil and filter is once a year or every 7,500 miles in passenger car and light truck gasoline engines. For diesel engines and turbocharged gasoline engines, the recommended interval is typically every 3,000 miles or six months.

If you read the fine print in your owners manual, however, you'll discover that the once a year, 7,500 mile oil change is for vehicles that are driven under "ideal" operating circumstances. What most of us think of as "normal" driving is actually "severe service" driving.

Severe service driving includes:

Frequent short trips (less than 10 miles, especially during cold weather)

Stop-and-go city traffic driving

Driving in dusty conditions (gravel roads, etc.)

Driving at sustained highway speeds during hot weather.

For severe service driving (which is what most of us do), the most common recommendation is to change the oil every 3,000 miles or six months (which ever comes first)."

http://www.aa1car.com/library/how_often_change_oil.htm

 

"If you pull the dipstick from most engines with even 10,000 miles on the oil, the oil will still feel slippery. It "can" still lubricate. The reason for the quote marks is, the oil is usually not the problem; it is other things in the oil.

While running, an internal combustion engine always has some leakage past the piston rings. That is; unburned fuel as well as combustion products get past the rings into the oil. Unburned fuel can wash oil from the cylinder walls causing wear.

Wear produces metal particles in the oil. Your oil filter will trap particles over a certain size, but smaller particles will pass through the filter and circulate through the engine, causing wear on bearings, rings and cylinder walls. The combustion products include many compounds, including acids that will both combine with and break down engine oil.

Synthetic oil will resist breakdown better than regular oil but carry particles just as well. Additives to any oil are also subject to chemical change due to combustion products that can reduce their effectiveness and may even make them harmful. An oil filter will not remove liquid chemicals that result from combustion."

http://www.78209.com/oil.html

 

"For my part, while Synthetic is often "slicker" and resists breakdown better, I use regular oil and change oil and filter frequently so I can get the contaminants out of the engine. The best oil and best filter will still not remove all the particles and none of the liquid contaminants."

http://www.78209.com/oil.html

 

"Q: How often should I change my oil?

A: There's a lot of discussion on this. I recommend every 3,000 miles. Some people might think, "Hey, that's pretty often." But whether you use synthetic oil or regular oil, the reason you want to change it is not just to do away with the dirt that's suspended in the oil, but also metal particles that are suspended in the oil just from normal wear and tear on the engine. You want to get rid of those often, because the particles can cause premature wear in the engine if they continue to circulate."

http://www.diynetwork.com/diy/ab_par...272515,00.html

 

"To reduce the costs of vehicle ownership and maintenance, many car makers say the oil filter only needs to be replaced at every other oil change. Most mechanics will tell you this is false economy.

The oil filters on most engines today have been downsized to save weight, cost and space. The "standard" quart-sized filter that was once common on most engines has been replaced by a pint-sized (or smaller) filter. You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out that a smaller filter has less total filtering capacity. Even so, the little filters should be adequate for a 3,000 mile oil change intervals -- but may run out of capacity long before a second oil change at 6,000 or 15,000 miles."

http://autos.yahoo.com/owning/mainta...ric%01qaengoil

 

That was a very good oil lesson Heritage07, taking your oil for granted can cause trouble down the road.
We in the HHR community all have a relatively new veh. to work with. The DIC is a guide to longevity. If you get a letter from a dealer/service dept. telling you it`s time to change your oil, or any of the recommended maintenance items that have been time tested and proven to show that if you don`t do it, it may come back to haunt you, well, you can throw that letter away, jump in your ride and keep on driving til the wheels fall off.
The old saying "pay now or pay later" is applicable here.

 

Just changed mine today, with 8% on oil life indicator, last change at 1,483 miles on 7/23/07, today 10,857 = 9,374 miles.

 

Do you use dino or synthetic?

 

Synthetic, I had Mobil one in, today i changed to Castrol Syntec