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

The other test you could do is put a drop of used oil on an inclined metal plate. Put a drop of fresh oil next to it. See which one drips down faster.

I'd actually be interested to see that.

Austin ! :)
Glad to see you here !

I hadn't noticed it, but after reading Oil Pans' tip about the oil smelling like gasoline, I noticed that it DOES smell like gas.
There is also blowby into the cylinders and when I pull out the spark plugs, they have oil in the threads.

I first noticed the oil in the threads around 10 years ago.


I have a bit of driving anxiety ( or a LOT actually ) as well as social anxiety / agoraphobia.
So this is actually my one and only car.

I live across the street from where i work and get food.

The car has never let me down despite me destroying it, so the least I can do is change the oil.

I walked over to CarMax and took a look at a Leaf.
I'm a geek about EVs, so thought about buying one ( I've seen them under 5K ! )
But with the amount of driving I do, it certainly doesnt make sense.
I also live in an apartment and would have to rent a garage $ .

How do you charge the car around town ?
Besides the chargers being out of service, or blocked, how do people in "Leaves" charge their cars when they cant fast charge like Teslas do ?
It seems like things would back up fast, and other EV owners would get mad !

BTW, I just noticed Austin just got an electric bus.
It has wheel skirts ! ( Wheel skirts, but no taper at the back though )

I don't know if this applies to you, but I have a theory that a lot of people are getting ring problems from not changing their oil often enough.

Toyotas, even with all their fame for being reliable, are also known for being oil burners. Right now I'm dealing with an oil burning Prius.

Most people blame Toyota for not making big enough oil relief passages around the oil control rings which over time allows sludge to build up and stop up the passages. Then the pistons effectively become oil pumps and pump oil up into the cylinders as the engine runs. But I think at least part of the problems is that people also like to go as long as they can without changing their oil. I theorize that by the time most Toyota owners change their oil (maybe once a year, if that, regardless of distance driven) the oil is now dirty and has lost it's detergent capabilities, which then causes that crud to build up there. Some have seen improvements by using a high detergent oil. I think that maybe just changing oil more often would solve the whole problem. We'll see though with my two Toyotas if I can fix the one and prevent the other from this problem.

When I had my Leaf I did charge at home, but a lot, if not most, was not at home. I would park at an outlet at my place of work (I didn't even ask. I still plug my block heater in there today, and nobody else plugs in nor bothers me about it.) I also used free public charging places all the time. I did have to walk around a bit more. But for the most part I never ever had any problem with charging stations being full of cars. The only charging problem I had was once on a 400 mile trip I was planning on charging at a station that ended up being out of service when I got there.

And I'm talking about a couple years ago in Western Colorado where there's maybe one little charging station with one or two charging spots in each big town about every 70 miles away from each other.

Still to this day I always check as I pass by the charging stations and don't think I've seen where there's hadn't been a place for another car to charge. Usually the charging stations are empty or have only one car charging.

Man, I miss my Leaf! I do think I probably should trade in my Prius for a Leaf again if the price for a decent Leaf ever get's low enough.

I did the oil drip test, and the old oil drips down only slightly faster than the new oil on a polished metal surface when held at an angle. ( a peanut butter lid )
Rather than take a whiff of the dipstick, i smelled the inside of the oil fill cap this time.
It smells like old oil to me, but probably has that gasolin-like smell others mentioned.
The new oil smells like the plastic container it was in, ( not much of an odor ) and now i wonder how old IT is. ( I need to write dates on things )
I started noticing oil seeping from the valve cover around the same time i noticed it leaking into the cyliners.
The oil is filthy, and looks like mud.
I think it's about time to change it.

Only 3 years? My old boss said he hadn't changed the oil in his Lexus LS430 for I think it was...6 years :O

He said it with a kind of guilty "I'm dumb" grin on his face, so I dropped my jaw and tried to do my best "I'm amazed your engine hasn't seized" face.

More seriously, I don't see much of a point in monitoring oil life...in the grand scheme of things, there are a lot more expensive maintenance items to do on a car, and keeping oil clean is probably the single most critical. Is it really too expensive to put a fresh jug of Supertech synthetic in every year?

I can't tell. Is everybody smiling on this thread? The OP is a dilly.

Is a knowing smirk equivalent to a smile?

A 30-month oil analysis thread-- https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/th...ner-v8.329130/

I doubt much will happen. I bought the Ranger in 2018 and didn't change the oil until a month or two ago. I also didn't drive it but maybe 1000 miles. And that oil was from the previous owner. I realistically wouldn't change a fresh oil change until i hit 3000 miles regardless of age of oil.
I'm in the same boat. I would sell the Ranger but after insurance, property tax, and tags I'm actually making money on the truck.

"Dilly" - I had to look that up.
So your calling me an idiot. *
Thanks.
So ok I AM an idiot, but have some courtesy.
I'm finding that there are jerks here just like elsewhere on the internet.

You all are the people that other people make fun of, and now you are making fun of me ?

Perhaps you didn't read my sarcasm very well in some of the posts, and you just thought I was trolling.
I did ask a valid question though, and indeed I have gone ( 3 ? ) years without changing my oil.

I just changed it yesterday.
The oil is black like mollases, but flows like the new oil i just put in.
It has a strong used oil smell, but I can't tell how much of the odor is like gasoline.
( Is that really a sign of bad oil, or was that a joke too ? )

The car is a piece of crap, i hardly drive it at all, and I have extreme OCD with several things.
I could care less about much of anything in life anymore, so the car just sits.
I didn't want to ask questions like this on a car forum, because those are the guys that i assume would expect a person to change the oil every couple of months, and act as if your commited an automotive sin by not doing so.

So i asked here.

Dealerships will tell people they need to replace parts that are totally fine every few years.
This is how business works.
I just wanted to know if it was the same way with oil changes.

* GrammerNotsee put that in for sarcasm

Sounds like a question for this place

https://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/fi...ds/contributed

Also sounds like time to buy a $2000 Volt or some other cheap EV and enjoy a $99 rental once a year to avoid oil changes.