L1's Garage

Yeah, never got the advertised 32 city 39 highway.
Although, I didn’t own it until 33K miles. No clue on its service prior to that.


@SgtAwesomesauce I don’t drive too much so I do a bit over 3K a year, so its changed about every 8 to 10 months.

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Ah, yeah. That’s fair.

If I have this car at 150k that’d be astonishing. I plan on having it for 7ish years and it seems like I’ll be putting on quite a bit less than 10k each year barring any big road trips.

Oh, that’s not bad. I put 7k on my Benz in the last year, so I’m hoping in 15 years, when I plan on getting rid of it, I’ll have it at 190k.

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I don’t think he has to worry about it.

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I see.

This thing looks like it could be straight out of sema though.

That’s the best PR stunt they could pull.

They’re going to get a couple news cycles out of it, I’m sure.

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Extended oil drain intervals are mostly based on the size of the sump, there’s no magical german engineering there. They just put a big sump (and big filter - the size of the oil filter on my E39 was 3x the size of the oil filter on other cars i’ve owned) on the motor for more oil capacity.

The more oil you have, the longer it takes to reach the same contamination level.

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more or less, yes. bigger engines still create more contamination, so its more about (bore times cyl count) vs the amount of oil, rather than raw oil amount.

Spidertrax 1.25" to fit the brakes.

Driver’s side caliper leaking at what appears to be the seal between the two halves, sucks.

Not a fan of the paint distorting the dust boot- Callahan brake parts get a ‘meh’ review from me, NAPA is probably better quality plus storefront exchange- lesson learned. Seller is sending another and a FedEx slip to send the old one back- truck remains OOC.

Please be careful with those spacers. They can be very bad for your hubs and knuckles.

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Yeah, i was being a bit simple, definitely bigger engines need bigger sumps in general.

But there’s also a trend with modern vehicles to just extend service intervals with (even) bigger oil capacities and filters. So that they can sell “X thousand mile service interval!” as a feature on the spec sheet or TV ad.

This isn’t engineering magic though.

As an aside though, even if you stick to the manufacturer service interval a lot of modern engines could do with more regular servicing than that.

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I didn’t realize that was why. The A6 I detailed last month (2017 SC V6 model) went 15k before it’s first oil change, as recommended from Audi. I was shocked when I heard that. I can’t imagine how much oil they need to allow for 15k miles.

I see this as a side effect of tighter tolerances, which are a good thing. Tighter tolerances are one way to improve efficiency. 5W-20 works just fine when it’s clean, but it gets out of spec much easier when it’s contaminated.

Just on spacers… a lot of people don’t know but you MUST ensure that

  • the locating ring on the hub sits up against the inside of the spacer. i.e. the locating ring on the hub is the same diameter as the inside diameter of the spacer.
  • the locating ring on the spacer sits flush up against the inside diameter of the centre bore on your wheel

If you DON’T do that, then:

  • the load that SHOULD be borne by your hub is borne by your wheel studs.
  • bad things, such as sheared off wheel studs and loss of wheels may result

This is a very real concern and i have had friends and others i know shear wheel studs off via incorrect use of spacers. Any cop over here will give you a defect notice/infringement for using spacers because this sort of thing happens when people don’t know what they’re doing with them or use spacers that can physically be installed but aren’t engineered to fit properly as per above.

That’s before you even take into account any additional loading placed on other suspension or drivetrain components by shifting the wheel track out wider.

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Tolerances help however oil contamination is still a thing.

Pop the valve cover off say, a BMW M62 motor that has had the BMW recommended services only and its filthy and gummed up with shit.

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Don’t forget operator death. Lose a wheel in a 50mph sweeping corner on a mountain road and you’re suddenly looking at a 450ft drop into a rocky canyon.

*I know that’s grim, but it happens every couple of years around here.

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Yep. I popped the valve cover off my Miata in March. Thing looked like it’s got 20k on it. Perfection, not a single scratch on the cams, the gulleys played host to a beautiful golden brown oil with not a single pocket of sludge. The engine just turned over 140k.

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Nice. Regular oil changes are cheap insurance and definitely help this sort of thing.

Trying to cheap out and push out service intervals will bite you in the long term.

i’m fully of the opinion that any modern engine, if looked after via regular service intervals will out last the rest of the vehicle.

My CBR600RR for example has 107,000 km on it, and that’s an engine that puts out 200HP/litre naturally aspirated and spins to 15,500 rpm (with me riding it, on a regular basis - like… every set of lights in first gear).

The engine is good as new. Pulls hard, no oil smoke, etc. BUT… service interval on that was originally 6000 km according to honda and got pushed out to 12,000 on the later model years (same identical engine).

Me? I did my first oil change on it at 500km (not on the schedule). The second was dealer service at 1500. Then i did every 3000 km after that for most of its life.

The engine on it shares oil between the gearbox and engine and also has a wet clutch. You can tell when the oil is past its best when the gearbox gets a bit notchier after about 3000-4000 km. Pushing out to 6000 as per manual definitely seems like you’re pushing the oil further than you would like to me.

Yeah, I’ve got a friend who was doing that to a car she’s still paying off.

I asked her how long since her last one:

uh, probably 10000 miles?

She drives a Hyundai, so it’s not like it’s designed for that.

That poor engine. She’ll be coming over next weekend and I’m gonna take care of it for her.


I knew a limo driver who used to put 700k on Town Cars. He swore up and down that the secret was replacing the transmission at 350k and doing the oil every 5k, on the dot.

Are lots of motorcycles like that or is that a Honda thing?

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Pretty much all motorcycles share engine and gearbox oil.

Most of them use a wet clutch (which also sits in your gearbox/engine oil and sheds friction material into it). Hence, especially on a motorcycle, if you ride hard and abuse the clutch you want to drop the oil more often.

Some special race replica models and a lot of Ducatis run a dry clutch which makes for changing clutches out faster (for race use - no need to drop oil) and means less power loss (again, good for race use) due to the clutch NOT being bathed in oil. They’re rattly (bikes have many clutch plates) and noisy though and that’s where the typical ducati clutch rattle comes from (youtube ducati clutch rattle to see what i mean)

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Hmm, that’s interesting. I guess wet clutches are implemented in part to reduce wear from slipping the clutch?

Just did. Damn. That’s obnoxious.