I asked a friend of mine what he though would happen if you quit changing your oil all together. He grew up on a farm and was in charge of the maintenance for multiple tractors, trucks, and cars… making him somewhat of an expert, I was surprised by some of the things he shared about his experience.
His sister inherited his Ford Thunderbird 5.0 years ago and she promptly began a maintenance program of “never change the oil”. Bad move. He finally broke down and did it himself and here is what he discovered in her engine. “Ugly black syrupy stuff that is not good for your engine it was so bad inside the engine of her car the dipstick was rusty and the oil on the tip of the dipstick was like tar that you had to squeeze off the end with your fingers… it was so gross.”
“That is when the car went from Ford Thunder bird 5.0 with potential to brother gets it back and says “get the hell rid of it” (it wasn’t maintained by the sister) you don’t want to keep that in the family.
She knows how to change oil, she changed oil with dad pushing a 55 gal drum of oil all around on the farm. She knows better but the laziness takes over and ends up with thick gooey oil on the end of her dipstick. This is on the edge of being a real problem.”
When I asked him what he thought about extended oil changes he said “stuff like that is created by the media… you gotta really keep on top of it”
“Trucks pulling loads with crappy oil will spin a main bearing. Dad spun a main bearing on a 460 cu in 86 ford pulling a load. hadn’t changed the oil for 14,000 miles on his f250 4 wheel drive regular cab. lazy takes over again. the air filter was packed all the time. now he has somebody else change his oil for him regularly and he drives diesels now because he believes they are more forgiving.”
Donavan says regular oil change and filter change maintenance dramatically improves the predictability of engine life. “On the farm it is going to be in excess of 200,000 miles if you change your oil regularly.” If you don’t change your oil your are going to kill your engine performance and fuel mileage and ultimately something dramatic can happen like spinning a main bearing.
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