What are the signs of oil viscosity breakdown ?
 

From what I am reading, the engine will run hotter, and the oil will thicken.
I drive my car on one long trip a year to see my parents . 140 there and back, so 280 miles.
Other than this, I will drive the car around two miles to the grocery store every couple of weeks.

And the car sits.

I start it for a few seconds to make sure the battery is still ok, and every so often top off my tires.

The last time I changed my oil was maybe two years ago.
Maybe even longer than that.
The oil looks like it should. Like a dark honey color, and it does not seem either thicker or thinner than normal oil.
It smells like normal dirty oil as well.

I think the last time I did the oil change, I use zero weight oil. 0-40 or whatever.
The car has around 140,000 miles on it - very few are mine.

I added half a quart of ( new ) 10-40w or 10w-50 around 4 months ago, since it looked slightly low.

The car seems to run fine so far.

What symptoms are going to show up by me not changing the oil ?

I notice the engine seens to warm up quite fast, but this could just be me being paranoid.

The rest of the time when driving the engine is at normal temp.

When driving on the highway, I get slightly higher than EPA, but I had a few aero mods on the car ( and now have even MWOOOOR ! ( never enough ! )

Is the engine going to suddenly sieze on me and then i dieeee ? Or is this not really something to care about. ( I don't care )

The car is a piece of crap, but has never let me down.

It smells like gasoline, it quickly spreads out like water when dripped on a polished metal surface.

Two years without changing the oil!

I have a relative that went two years without changing the oil. Now the car doesn't run.

From what I understand oil will thicken at first but then go thin. Or maybe the other way around.

Looking at the oil really isn't a good way of checking viscosity. This is especially true when testing the oil cold because most the time oil will be much warmer and could thin out a lot more at higher temps than what you see when cold.

Lots of things could happen from not changing the oil. Probably one of the most common things is that the rings get gummed up from lack of detergent, then it starts pumping oil up into the cylinders and burning oil.

You could take a sample and have it tested by a lab. They'll tell you if it should be changed. My guess is that it's OK.

Lol. Yah I think I might go ahead and change it.
I thought about it again, and it's fixing to be a new year.
That means the oil is most likely over 3 years old.
( Or is it 4 ? I lost track. I know it's at leat 3. )

I might even splurge and get some of the expensive stuff that costs a full dime more a quart. ( That"s a big if though. That's a full 50 cents more. )
FIFTY CENTS !!! OMG !!!
Oh, how am I ever going to find the extra money for that ?? ( crowd funding perhaps ? )

One of the reasons for a periodic oil change is that the sulphur in the oil along with other compounds produce acids when there is moisture in the oil, a Combustion byproduct. Not good juju for bearing and structure life in an engine. That said I know of many 20 year old engines that have had 5 year oil changes without much problems, but those are low use trucks.

Heat breaks down oil, most time otherwise it gets thicker.

Hello from Austin!

I wouldn't worry much about three years. My car has an oil life monitor and it's only down to 55% after 1.5 years. I've driven probably 5000 miles in that time, too.

Might want to think about selling the car, though. Doesn't sound like you really need it. I'm trying to talk my wife down to one car. :P

I see you have a Nissan Leaf. (?? :confused: ??)

When we had our Leaf I had the goal of selling all our other cars and just using the Leaf. At the time the amount of driving we'd do in an ICE car wasn't enough to make financial sense. Insurance, oil changes, etc would have been the same or more than just renting a car every so often.

Or just take the time to drive the Leaf from charging station to charging station. I actually liked driving the Leaf on long tripsm it was a lot less stress inducing. Well unless you reached a charging station that was out of service and didn't know if you had enough range to make it to the next one. Or when you planned to charge up next to a shopping mall so your wife could have something to do while the car charges only to find out the mall is closed.

Oh, and some people get by without ever changing their oil. Some stories here-- https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/th...just-add.3964/

I have an oil pressure gauge and after about 6 - 7000 km the pressure tends to drop at both cold and hot idle by a few psi. I think that’s telling me to change the oil