BimmerFan52

RE: Your oil change frequency
If your BMW usage was 50% city/50% highway and you assume an average 15mph city driving and 55mph highway, then your average speed would be estimated at 35mph. 7500miles/35mph = 214 total hours on your oil. For vehicles that are not towing, operating in dust conditions or idling for long periods 214 hours is reasonable between oil changes. There will still be a good level of additives remaining in the oil.

Let's say you did nearly all stop and go city driving, averaged 10mph and let your oil go 15,000 miles.
You would have 1500 hours on the oil under some of the most severe conditions. It is guaranteed that most or all of your additives would be gone. The oil that started out as a multi-viscosity oil would now be basically a straight-weight oil, with no detergents or additives to prevent contaminants from settling onto engine surfaces. Bad things would now be happening to your engine.



RE: Why does BMW take care of the oil changes but make you go 14K on it?
In the highly competitive auto industry there is great pressure upon auto manufacturers to show favorable TCO or Total Cost of Ownership numbers.
To calculate TCO the lease or purchase cost is added to scheduled maintenance costs as well as estimated fuel and insurance costs. Higher TCOs for manufacturers within a given segment of the auto market put brands in an unfavorable light. If you examine long term reviews conducted by auto magazines they include the maintenance costs paid during testing.

To reduce the TCO, manufacturers can either extend maintenance schedules in order to reduce these costs, or entirely absorb the cost of certain maintenance items. Because they work out favorable volume discounts with dealers they don't necessarily have to absorb the entire costs.

By moving an oil change frequency from 5,000 miles between changes to 15,000 the manufacturer will reduce the number of oil changes during a 50,000 warranty from 10 to 3; a significant savings. To make this number more ambiguous to the owner, and allow the dealer to deflect criticism, BMW hides behind CBM or condition based maintenance, where the computer calculates the point at which the oil needs to be changed. This might vary from 9,000 to 16,000 miles.

The risk to the manufacturer during the warranty period is low. The effects of contaminated oil or oil that has used up its additives is primarily attacking gaskets and seals, the formation of sludge and accelerated wear on key friction surfaces. These effects generally do not result in symptoms until 60,000 or 70,000 miles.

If you are going to keep a car past the warranty period, add at least one extra oil change in between each oil change the dealer does. If your driving conditions are severe (all city driving), add two oil changes between each dealer oil change and your car will thank you many times over, and you will likely reap huge savings in repair costs.

BimmerFan52

I guess I'm confused.
I repeated the other posters contention that Mobil 1 is produced with primarily Group III hydrocracked mineral oil in order to refute it.

Are you agreeing with him or me?

Do you think Mobil 1 is or is not produced with primarily PAO Group IV oil?

Nika

Guys how about Shell Helix 0w-40?

BimmerFan52

Sorry if I came off as an a$$hole. Didn't mean to. I agree that the forums are to share thoughts freely.

Your opinions about how your car ran and what you think works best for your car are important to you, and interesting reading for all of us. Each of us has different experiences with our cars and have to individually decide what works best for us. I guarantee you that no matter what quality oil you pick, if you change it often enough you will have outstanding results.

I only took exception to your stating as fact what were apparently gut feelings - that the oil was used up or how the oil is made.
There is lots of opinion expressed on this forum, but I believe more value is added to others on the forum when we can be as factual as possible.

Regarding learning more about oil, some of the best websites I have gained information from are websites written for industrial maintenance professionals who maintain engines in locomotives, steam ships, semi tractors, buses, heavy machinery, power plants and farm equipment. These engines are by orders of magnitude many times more expensive than an automobile engine and breakdowns can be extremely expensive. Their discussions of oil and drain frequency all center around hours of operation.

The lesson I take away is that oil doesn't know how far you drive, just how many hours it has been working in the engine. Estimating the time it takes to drive certain distances will allow you to estimate hours of operation on your engine. The real shame is that our BMWs already have the capability of calculating hours of engine time and miles driven, and could calculate this for us. Many delivery trucks, semi-tractors and some heavy duty pickups have hour meters to remove the guess work. We should be able to punch in our own maximum number of hours we want to go between oil changes (based upon the type of oil and operating conditions) and then wait until the computer notifies us via the iDrive.

IMHO keeping your oil changes, depending upon operating conditions, between 125 and 250 hours of engine operation (I recommend 300 hours max) and using high quality synthetic or mineral oil will result in long engine life.

BimmerFan52

Assume you mean the Ultra synthetic.

I have heard excellent things about it.

And although LL-01 is not the end-all criteria the BMW approval doesn't hurt either.

Maini

Thanks for the feedback.. I think the gauge to measure the oil in hrs is very good and logically accurate. I think I learnt that from you and will definitely use it. Maybe I can use the trip information meter.. reset it when the oil is changed.. it captures hours.... BTW no offense taken Cheers!! Pennzoil will be my choice of oil 5W40 is what I would go with.. and currently I go with 8K miles but I need to figure out a way to measure hrs in all my cars.. accurately..

phlfly

I agree with Mobil 1 is most Group IV, it seems to me (I read on bobsoil..) 0w-30, 0w-40 is 100% group IV, but other could be Group III, but it's just name because read this:
A natural evolution of the formulation

The Mobil 1 formulation strategy has always been based on selecting the best components available. We now have the very high quality Group III+ base stock, ?Visom? exclusively available to ExxonMobil. As we developed the Mobil 1 ESP technology we found that combining Visom with PAO could deliver a formulation of equivalent performance to an all PAO formulation.

Competitive advantage

Visom is the only non-PAO stock that can deliver the required performance to formulate a 0W grade oil that meets European OEM engine oil specifications. Visom is not available to our competition.

To support Mobil 1 growth

Global PAO capacity is limited. As we quickly approach this limit, new base stocks must be explored to ensure we can support the continued growth of the Mobil 1 family of products.

To ensure continuity of supply

As we saw with the 2005 hurricane, the more flexibility we have in our formulations, the better placed we are to withstand disruption to our supply. We can balance PAO and Visom supply fluctuations to ensure we can always deliver the final product to our customers.

To maintain market relevant pricing

As PAO supply has tightened globally, raw material costs have increased substantially. In the future, an exclusively PAO formulation may be priced out of the market or result in significant margin erosion.

To prepare for next generation basestocks (GTL)

Commencing 2010, the next generation of base stocks derived from Natural Gas (Gas To Liquids) will enter the market. These high quality basestocks will arrive in substantial quantities and will probably be used in the majority of competitive premium formulations. Visom is viewed as a precursor of GTL, and hence it?s use now in our flagship formulations eases our transition to a GTL world, and helps us understand how to maintain flagship performance using these high quality non-PAO basestocks.

phlfly

The oil temp doesn't depend just only time of running, but their condition of running, meaning how much power do you extract at this moment. You don't use all 300 hp, at 2000 rmp, so it's not much heat. Your HP peak more likely at 5000 rmp for turbo engine, do you rev the engine to 5,000 rmp all the time? I guess not.

Nika

Yes, It says Shell Hellix Ultra Fully synthetic 0w-40.
I also like Castrol Edge sport 0w-40. but shell is a first time for me. waiting to change in about 1k km.

Anthracite530i

I recently used Mobil 1 5W30 on my 2004 530. But I was changing it every 15,000, I might go with 8,000 miles now, the car has 117,600 on it