31–40 of 61 posts
I change my oil religiously, but I ignore safety recalls because I hate going to dealerships.
While I totally agree with most of the article, it made me grind my teeth at the frequency the author changes the oil in their car... That poor valvetrain will be full of gummy carbon deposits. RIP whoever buys the car second-hand.
You must have missed that he drives 2000 not 20000 km per year. He says he changes oil around every year, so every 2000km (1200 miles). If he changed every 6 months, he'd be changing every 1000km. That's insane! I don't even refuel every 1000km! Example oil change schedule for a modern car (Taken from Audi Q7 '09 service manual): 8.000km, 25.000km, 40.000km, 55.000km... So ~15.000km between changes - or 7.5 years if…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's a difference in the oil used. The standards for oil are tightly regulated in the EU.
The manufacturers are pretty picky with what oils they recommend for their cars too. I mean if I need a "fully synthetic 10W-30" for my car for example (from the manual) - and the brands are all global megacorps (Shell, Havoline, Mobil, Castrol etc). So with the tight spec and global brands surely I must be getting the same thing in the bottle here as one gets in the US?
But many brands meet that spec. It's really only white label conventional bottles that don't.
Another reason for the resistance is the pain of upgrading. Anything that requires a reboot, for example, is likely to be held off for a long time. When people are at the computer, it's because they want to use it right now . They aren't there to watch it reboot a few times. It's less painful once you scale past single systems. Insofar as you have distributed systems that tolerate some fraction of their instances dis…
While I totally agree with most of the article, it made me grind my teeth at the frequency the author changes the oil in their car... That poor valvetrain will be full of gummy carbon deposits. RIP whoever buys the car second-hand.
I always wondered how this oil-change scam still continues in the US. Modern cars with synthetic oils don't need an oil change every 3-4 months or 3000 miles. I always changed the oil according to the (European or Japanese) manufacturer's schedule (once a year / every 10-15000km) and had no issues with the cars (even >10 years old cars).
Parts stores still push the 3k miles/3 months (or did until very recently). Dealers and manufacturers don't, and haven't for at least 10 years.
While I totally agree with most of the article, it made me grind my teeth at the frequency the author changes the oil in their car... That poor valvetrain will be full of gummy carbon deposits. RIP whoever buys the car second-hand.
The biggest change will not come from getting users to upgrade, it will come from producing higher quality software in the first place.
In terms of safety, not much good comes from asking people.
(That, or let's just all agree that CVEs are a threat to Internet security, and have a policy for always displaying a message like "Your device will reboot in 05:00 in order to install a critical security patch. Please save your work." and have the users take comfort that it's not just their computer, but half of the planet is rebooting with them. That solution is game-theoretically unstable, though.)
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most people don't use synthetic oil. In my case, it's cheaper to use non-synthetic oil and change it quarterly, which generally aligns with other maintenance activity. (Tire rotation, filters, lights, etc)
Here in Europe engine oil is typically always multi-grade, and often fully synthetic. I believe this is because standards are stricter here (although I can't find anything confirming this), and synthetic oil often leads to engines lasting longer and lower emissions. This is why manufacturers have different recommendations for Europe. The formula of the oil is completely different to the US, so it can stay in the engi…
This is true in theory, but for most people the rest of the car will fall apart before the engine dies. All the rubber and plastic is degraded by air and sunlight which has little to do with any use patterns. (there are of course uses that put more wear on them as well)
A good portion of the cars are junked with so little use that they would have made it that far without any oil changes at all. Of course the oil would be like syrup, and the engine would show other signs of the abuse, but it would still be running well enough to make that last trip before the car is destroyed for other reasons.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
You must have missed that he drives 2000 not 20000 km per year. He says he changes oil around every year, so every 2000km (1200 miles). If he changed every 6 months, he'd be changing every 1000km. That's insane! I don't even refuel every 1000km! Example oil change schedule for a modern car (Taken from Audi Q7 '09 service manual): 8.000km, 25.000km, 40.000km, 55.000km... So ~15.000km between changes - or 7.5 years if…
Refuel every 1000km... I envy you. Could you share some details, as it made me curious ?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I know nothing on the matter, but it seems to me that it's a cultural difference. Americans are just more used to changing the oil often, so oil companies can sell them more oil even if they don't need it.
Found this http://www.autoblog.com/2009/02/24/oil-change-intervals/ "For years the accepted oil change interval (as per carmakers) had been every 3 months or 3000 miles, whichever comes first. And why was that? It was because oils of yesterday broke down when left in the crankcase environment for longer than the prescribed interval. The combination of heat, friction, and the oil oxidizing over time resulted in an unh…