Americans and oil changes..

[LostnotFound]

On a sort of related to oil note I thought they were into a lot of fast fit things?

While watching Baseball there's always adverts for getting your Shocks changed every X miles (60,000 off the top of my head). Is that because as a sport it has an ageing fanbase who might still be stuck in these ideas? I mean a broken spring is a bridging offence to half of the cars over here let alone the idea of changing early as preventative maintenance.

I guess being stuck in the middle of nowhere is less of a fun idea a country that is rather large, so early oil changes etc might be an easier sell.

[PhilA]

The roads here are generally not quite as billiard table smooth as they are there (believe it or not, comparatively the roads in the UK and Europe are on average a damn sight better than here) and long distances with the suspension being battered perpetually makes for soggy handling and vomit-inducing pitch in a lot of heavier vehicles.

Hence "change your shocks", because a lot of dampers have had it after 50k or so. I would change the ones on my pickup trucks every 40-50k when I was driving a lot here. 

As for oil changes, yes. Quite a lot of high mile, highway use sees cars that still run well despite being over the 300k mark with the interior in tatters and the bodywork and paint having seen better days. A lot comes down to oil change attitude- I change mine when it gets dirty, both the Jeep and the Dodge have a factory 5000 mile interval, after which the change in engine note and smoothness is noticeable.

The Pontiac has a factory specified 1700 miles between oil changes. That was common until the 60's, where the 3000 mile interval was introduced and followed by most manufacturers. A lot of people still remember that and still change their oil regularly. Ultimately there's no harm to the engine doing so. It's also kept the routine oil change price to a modest minimum. 

I cannot beat the dealership price for oil and filter by doing it myself, with the same brand stuff that they use (either Pennzoil for the Jeep or Shell Helix for the Dodge).

However, older vehicles- totally different story. Usually a case of run it into the ground then complain bitterly about the marque on Facebook and then buy another beater.

YMMV.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

Also, keep in mind that the price of a used vehicle doesn't plummet, either. 

A car that you can expect to run, drive, steer and stop safely, 15+ years old is still in the $3000-7000 ballpark depending on what it is.

Sub-1000 cars really don't exist unless you want to drag something home that's been sitting in a field for 20 years.

So, maintaining the same vehicle for a long time is more cost effective than buying a nice used example for $150 every October.

 

Phil

[TrabbieRonnie]

My old Toyota Surf gets oil every 5000kms, as specified in the manual, I change the filter every second time.  Seems to like it, but is fairly ancient now I suppose at 29 years old.  

Bog standard Halfords 10w40 semi, did try fully synth once, many moons ago, but it pissed out everywhere!

The one good thing is it's nice and high, no jacking required!

[Rod/b]

17 hours ago, PhilA said:

Really depends where you go.

Jiffy Lube "5 minutes" change you're lucky if they even take the old oil out... But yeah, that's done via suction tube so they don't have to spend time putting the car up on the ramp.

Dealership that services my Challenger (yeah, but it's the kind of vehicle the next buyer wants to see FDSH) drains it out the sump plug when it's up on a ramp but they also do a rudimentary inspection of the car at the same time.

 

Phil

 

 

They have to have the Challenger up in the air to see if the front lower arms are fucked yet. A couple of my friends had them, and I had a Charger, and they all had bushes wear out with monotonous regularity. 

[LostnotFound]

Thanks Phil that makes sense, it's really interesting to get a perspective from over there. 

[bigstraight6]

Interesting thread, I’ve always changed oil and filter at either 6 or 12 months max (12 in the case of my old Volvo S60 as the oil is so bloody expensive!) for my daily cars. Grandad always said that the oil was the most important moving part of the engine and it’s advice which I’ve always adhered to.

[PhilA]

1 hour ago, Rod/b said:

They have to have the Challenger up in the air to see if the front lower arms are fucked yet. A couple of my friends had them, and I had a Charger, and they all had bushes wear out with monotonous regularity. 

Yeah, my old one went through a set.

They changed the design, apparently, now they're less prone to wearing out and now more prone to squeaking.

 

Phil

[PhilA]

58 minutes ago, LostnotFound said:

Thanks Phil that makes sense, it's really interesting to get a perspective from over there. 

For instance, some old porridge:

Want a 35 year old car for $5k? One that everything works on and hasn't gone intergalactic miles?

 

Phil

[Ian_Fearn]

8 minutes ago, PhilA said:

For instance, some old porridge:

Want a 35 year old car for $5k? One that everything works on and hasn't gone intergalactic miles?

 

Phil

Those A body cars were comparatively decent cars back in the day. My dad had a Chevrolet Celebrity when we moved over to the USA in 85. We left behind a really early 1981 Astra 1200s in the uk. The plushness compared to the Astra was incredible. 

[mat_the_cat]

10 hours ago, cort1977 said:

it's a cherished belief which is fiercely held

Americans? Surely not.

[PhilA]

35 minutes ago, Ian_Fearn said:

Those A body cars were comparatively decent cars back in the day. My dad had a Chevrolet Celebrity when we moved over to the USA in 85. We left behind a really early 1981 Astra 1200s in the uk. The plushness compared to the Astra was incredible. 

They were very squidgy cars. Both in terms of upholstery and ride.

[1970mgb]

I think that the high relative resale value of used cars is related to two things. One is that new ones are ridiculously expensive now. Off the top of my head, the least expensive car that comes to mind is the Kia Rio(there are probably other similarly priced ones), which starts at $16K. That's for the "stripper", though, and you probably won't find one on a dealer's lot for under $18K or so. A common reliable family car like a Camry starts at $25K, but you'd be lucky to get an inventory one off the lot for much under $30K. The common CUVs and things like that now tend to be in the $30-40K range.

Just as a point of reference, my first Lincoln was a 2004 LS. I bought it 4 years old for $12K, but it had the window sticker still in the glove box. It had nearly every option checked-it was the V8 "Sport" trim(second highest trim package), and I think the only things it lacked that were available were navigation and back-up sensors. It might have had Satellite radio as an option-I know I didn't have it but I seem to recall there being a button on the radio for it(but no antenna). The sticker price was $42K, and adding in the missing stuff would have brought it I think to $45K. The low end Continental my dad just bought, again as a point of comparison, stickered at close to $60K(he bought it new/never titled but as year old stale inventory, and didn't pay anywhere near that). That was for a V6 front wheel drive(not even AWD) car on the Taurus platform, not a V8 on a ground-up-new design like my LS was. The LS, as a point of comparison, platform shared with the Jag S-type, and the V8 was a 3.9L version of the AJ-V8.

The second thing that I think drives up prices-still-happened over 10 years ago and that's the "Cash for Clunkers" program. Basically, the government had a massive program to both attempt to drive new sales from the auto makers and also get less efficient cars off the road. You'd take a qualifying car(IIRC, it had to be between 5 and 20 years old and something like lower than 24mpg combined EPA city/highway-don't hold me to ages or mileage exactly, but that was the general idea) in to a new car dealership, and they'd credit you something like $4K toward the purchase of a new vehicle. That was more than a whole lot of them were worth, so it was an attractive deal. Once a dealership took them in, though, they had to dump a slurry into the engine and run it until it seized, then the body had to be junked. It was tightly controlled, so once a car was "surrendered" into that program there was no way to save it. Junkyards also basically couldn't salvage any running gear off of it either(I forget if they could grab transmissions and the like, but the engines were intentionally made unrepairable and the body was crushed into scrap metal). A lot of really great cars died that way. I feel like even ~13 years later, we're still seeing the effect of that on the resale market. In particular, a lot of the newest cars taken in would now be ~20 years old, which is prime time for bottom of the barrel pricing. In short, there too many people competing for cars that are in much shorter supply than you'd expect given their new sales.

[PhilA]

Katrina drove the prices of cars up here, and they stayed high.

[Madman Of The People]

Hello, Autoshite's resident Yank, here.

I think I can offer some insight into America's oil change obsession which, I believe, are down to the following reasons....

1. The old "change your oil every three months or 3,000 miles" rule is a holdover from decades past.  Older non-synthetic oils, especially before the advent of modern additives, did not have the lubricating quality of today's engine oils.  Also, older oils suffered from thermal breakdown much more rapidly than the newer stuff.   Add to this the fact metallurgy and engineering tolerances of engines from the 1970s and earlier were nowhere near what they are today. This meant frequent oil changes were much more critical than they are now.  Today, most manufacturers specify an oil change interval of anywhere between 7,500 and 10,000 miles, with 5,000 miles being the recommended interval for vehicles used in "Severe Conditions."  Alas, old habits die hard and there are plenty of people who still insist on following the old rules, even though it is no longer necessary to do so.

2. The oil companies did, and continue to do, an excellent job at marketing.  Decades of television adverts extolling the benefits of frequent oil changes  (not to mention the supposed benefits of their particular brand of oil) have convinced generations of motorists to change their oil often.  The rise of Jiffy-Lube and it's many imitators have made doing so inexpensive, quick and painless.  However, since these places tend to employ people with only the most basic and rudimentary mechanical ability and pay them a very low wage, horror stories of botched services at these places are as common as sand in the Sahara.  Check out the story of this Audi S4 owner who took his car to Valvoline for an oil change...

https://www.audizine.com/forum/showthread.php/681930-Just-another-reason-not-to-take-your-S4-to-an-instant-oil-change-shop

3. American motorists are extremely risk-adverse and will often fall for "feel-good" measures, hoping they will make their cars last longer.  This is because real wages in America haven't risen since the 1970s and, for many people, have actually declined. The upshot of this is everyone is skint and simply can't afford to have a breakdown.  In most of America, public transport is nonexistent, making a functioning car a vital necessity.  The sad truth is many Americans are just one paycheque away from homelessness and if the car breaks, they can't get to work.  With the average new car now approaching $40,000, plenty of working class people have simply been priced-out of the new car market.  The knock-on effect of this is demand for used cars has skyrocketed in recent years, making even clapped-out old bangers outrageously expensive.  Naturally, this situation has created a strong incentive to get the maximum amount of life from your old heap and hopefully keep it going as long as possible.  It is my contention frequent oil changes provide a psychological benefit.

I hope this adequately explains why Americans are seemingly obsessed with changing oil.

[tooSavvy]

I stated on Geo/Swift forum [US biased] I was servicing it & refilling with 10W-40.

I got roasted "10W-30 MUST BE USED or Nuns & Kittens die!"

Whatevvs..... As a shopping trolley I won't exceed 6k PA so annual refill will be my schedule >>> just like ToMM©

 

[Bitzer]

1 hour ago, tooSavvy said:

I was servicing it & refilling with 10W-40.

I got roasted "10W-30 MUST BE USED or Nuns & Kittens die!"

 

 

I have never quite understood the 5W30 specification for both 1.8 and 1.6 16V petrol Focuses. I would not bet my life on it, but I believe the engines were Ford Germany´s design made in Spain, i.e. one would expect the bog-standard 5W40.

As I cannot be bothered to search in dark corners of them intertubes or pay extra XY for this rather unusual specification, it is always 5W40. Nothing exploded in the mushroom cloud of doom yet.

[warch]

People over here can be ridiculously obsessive compulsive about oil too. I remember quite a funny thread on pisstonheads a few years ago when someone was breathlessly posting because he'd had a low oil warning light come on and had to refill his Beemer or whatever with generic oil obtained from a petrol station.

He (I assume it was a he) was obsessing about trying to get all the non approved oil out of his engine. There were quite a few replies suggesting the pouring genuine approved oil through the engine as flush then flushing the engine and changing the filter then refilling with more genuine approved oil. As I recall one of the last posts on the thread opined that it would be better to do all that then 'nuke the car from orbit, it's the only way to be sure'. 

Modern engines tend to run more or less indefinitely and will usually outlive the economic life of the car, which is usually governed by the first MoT bill that comes close to the value of the car. Some countries (or states therein) like the US or Australia don't have yearly MoTs and often only have a statutory inspection when the car changes hands, so vehicles can be much older and run with faults much longer than is possible in the UK, racking up much bigger mileages in the process.  

[cort1977]

2 hours ago, Bitzer said:

I have never quite understood the 5W30 specification for both 1.8 and 1.6 16V petrol Focuses. I would not bet my life on it, but I believe the engines were Ford Germany´s design made in Spain, i.e. one would expect the bog-standard 5W40.

As I cannot be bothered to search in dark corners of them intertubes or pay extra XY for this rather unusual specification, it is always 5W40. Nothing exploded in the mushroom cloud of doom yet.

My Mustang is supposed to be 5W/20.  Since this is unavailable at shiter's rates it's currently quite happily running on Tesco's finest 5W/30.  I have not posted this incredibly dull fact anywhere else for fear of mass extinction of nuns and kittens.

Think 5w/20 gives a marginal fuel economy gain on a new engine in the lab which was probably enough to help Ford's CAFE figure that year given the volume of sales.

[iainrcz]

I get mine serviced once a year usually.

I fancied a go myself for the first time in years so ordered some bits. They came this morning. I might get it done, when it stops pissing it down. So maybe this year..

I ordered the cheapest oil that meets the required spec. I'm a rebel like that.

 

Just don't mention it on the Facecock owner's group, they'll come and lynch me for ruining my car.

 

I did get a genuine Toyota, Subaru, Toyota, Subaru, Toyobaru? oil filter though.

[sierraman]

I remember years ago on the old top gear they ran an article on buying a used car in America, like £4-5000 got you a really nice 70’s tank and new cars were dirt cheap. Seems things have changed for the worse. 

Are scrapyards, car spares shops and DIY a thing in the USA to save a few $?

Its not somewhere I’d want to live, certified lunatics in charge and a system that effectively bankrupts you if you have the misfortune to suffer a serious health condition. 

[Andyrew]

Slighty off topic but at work its very common for eastern europeans to always want the "best" parts no matter what the vehicle. 

I understand it on something a bit new and with a pricey lump like a large Audi/Bmw but 50 quids worth of castrol edge in a rough Y reg tdi bora seems a bit late to me. 

I guess probaby similar situation to America as the cost of used cars in europe being fairly high so its seen as an investment that needs looking after.

[martc]

'Jiffy Lube'

[Wack]

On 1/18/2021 at 11:14 PM, Skut said:

The whole pence per mile calculation can't be such a big thing in the US. 

I got talking to a guy in a queue in disneyworld 10 years go, he'd driven from ohio ,1800 mile round trip for a 4 day christmas break

I asked him why he hadn't flown or taken the train

3 kids so 5 return plane tickets plus a rental car

the trains in the US go city to city so to get to florida takes days of zig zagging and still no car

Drive on a 4 lane highway that starts 5 miles from his front door and finishes in Orlando 70 gallons of fuel @$3 a gallon

The car is the only viable means of long distance transport for many americans

 

The one thing that surprised me back then was diesel wasn't even on the main forecourt , only round the back where the trucks were, given they can get 50+ mpg out of a 3.0D fitted in a luxury car I was really surprised the diesel hadn't taken off there as it's perfect for cruising those kind of distances

 

[iainrcz]

47 minutes ago, Andyrew said:

Slighty off topic but at work its very common for eastern europeans to always want the "best" parts no matter what the vehicle. 

I understand it on something a bit new and with a pricey lump like a large Audi/Bmw but 50 quids worth of castrol edge in a rough Y reg tdi bora seems a bit late to me. 

I guess probaby similar situation to America as the cost of used cars in europe being fairly high so its seen as an investment that needs looking after.

A Polish guy at work had an older Passat (he now has a newer one, what is it with Poles and German cars) that used to burn loads of oil. Every morning after work he'd slosh in some Castrol something or other. It must have cost him a fortune.

We nicknamed it the Exxon Valdez.

[wuvvum]

56 minutes ago, sierraman said:

Its not somewhere I’d want to live, certified lunatics in charge

But only for another four hours.

 

/politics

[Daviemck2006]

certified lunatics in charge and a system that effectively bankrupts you if you have the misfortune to suffer a serious health condition. 

Talking about the UK?

Sent from my SM-T585 using Tapatalk

[Rod/b]

17 minutes ago, Wack said:

I got talking to a guy in a queue in disneyworld 10 years go, he'd driven from ohio ,1800 mile round trip for a 4 day christmas break

I asked him why he hadn't flown or taken the train

3 kids so 5 return plane tickets plus a rental car

the trains in the US go city to city so to get to florida takes days of zig zagging and still no car

Drive on a 4 lane highway that starts 5 miles from his front door and finishes in Orlando 70 gallons of fuel @$3 a gallon

The car is the only viable means of long distance transport for many americans

 

The one thing that surprised me back then was diesel wasn't even on the main forecourt , only round the back where the trucks were, given they can get 50+ mpg out of a 3.0D fitted in a luxury car I was really surprised the diesel hadn't taken off there as it's perfect for cruising those kind of distances

 

Exactly the same where i live now, except there are no trains at all, unless you are transporting hundreds of thousands of tons of solid fuel. Petrol is 35p / litre and you sit in the car while a man pumps it for you (the fuel, that is...) Diesel is for buses, large trucks and plant machinery, and is only in the pumps ‘round the back’ (unless you work at a refinery or well, then spark ignition is not considered a desirable feature - derv and exhaust flame traps all round)

[Talbot]

19 hours ago, PhilA said:

Also, keep in mind that the price of a used vehicle doesn't plummet, either. 

A car that you can expect to run, drive, steer and stop safely, 15+ years old is still in the $3000-7000 ballpark depending on what it is.

Sub-1000 cars really don't exist unless you want to drag something home that's been sitting in a field for 20 years.

You also have to take into account that the UK seems to be the exeption for old cars being valueless.  Just about everywhere else in the world, older cars seem to keep their value significantly better than here.  I've only really looked at the US and EU, (and some other areas based on comments I've seen here and there) but in general, what is considered to be a valueless old shunter in the UK would be worth many thousands just about anywhere else in the world.  Hence the reason there is so much export of older rammel from the UK to elsewhere.

Great for us, as it means there are cheap cars available, but bad in other ways as older stuff disappears from the road so quickly, meaning if you want to keep something older on the road, parts availability suddenly can become difficult.  This is exactly what I'm experiencing with my S210 at the moment.  There's very few left on the roads and parts are becoming hard to come by because there's so little demand, meaning whole cars just get baled rather than being broken for spares.

And yet in the US, a 23 year old S210 would be worth maybe $5k.  In Germany one would be worth €3500 easily, probably more.  UK?  Lucky to get £1k for it.  I paid just £600 for mine. (Granted, with a gearbox problem that needed fixing.)

 

[Ian_Fearn]

16 minutes ago, Rod/b said:

Exactly the same where i live now, except there are no trains at all, unless you are transporting hundreds of thousands of tons of solid fuel. Petrol is 35p / litre and you sit in the car while a man pumps it for you (the fuel, that is...) Diesel is for buses, large trucks and plant machinery, and is only in the pumps ‘round the back’ (unless you work at a refinery or well, then spark ignition is not considered a desirable feature - derv and exhaust flame traps all round)

My grandad spent the final 50 years of his life in the USA. I always used to ask him why Americans didn’t drive diesels considering the MPG benefits. He always claimed the manufacturers tried to push diesel in the 80s but they were catastrophically shite and public perception was set for the next 25 years.

Just when people were starting to get back into diesel in the naughties, Dieselgate happened.