[Amizzi]

Hey guys,

Done some research on this with many different opinions and guidelines so I just wanted to see what you guys thought within the community.
I drive my 335 very little its strickly a weekend summer driver as I drive a company vehicle 95% of the time .

Last summer after changing my oil (Motul) I had done approximately 3,000km and then the car was parked .
In the past I had been doing oil changes every 6,000km and changing the filter every 3,000km (I get filters though work for peanuts).

My question is how long can the oil last in the sump?
Ive been told by certain people that it should be done annually regardless and others have said to continue using it till the km are reached.

I'm not overly concerned about the cost of oil, just seems like such a waste to dump it with such little run time

[John 070]

I think BMW's official stance is now 2 years....

None of it ever made any sense--because of free maintenance, they said if you did not reach 6k, you no longer got a free oil change because you didn't need it. I would always say, what's the difference, 5,999, vs. 6,000? The difference is bmw said the former didn't need an annual change, then they retracted that statement.

p.s. why change the filter more often than the oil itself? Supposedly we too would get free filters through FCP (haven't tried it yet), but doesn't mean I'd want to change it more often...

[Wilt]

With a BMW under new car or CPO warranty you MUST change oil at minimum annual interval, to maintain your warranty in effect.

[335NJ]

Originally Posted by Wilt

With a BMW under new car or CPO warranty you MUST change oil at minimum annual interval, to maintain your warranty in effect.

I would still change it in between. The whole 15k or 2 years crap is insane.

[jt335i]

Since you do not drive it very often, changing once a year should be fine.
Typically, motor oils in an unopened bottle stay stable and have a shelf life of up to five years. Our cars use full synthetic motor oil for the best engine protection and the additive compounds added to it also help the oil last longer which is why they say you can change the oil every 15,000 miles to a year. One thing that can affect the life of your oil is temperature. It is advised that oil be stored at constant optimum temperatures of between 40 degrees and 85 degrees Fahrenheit. Extreme temperatures such as below 0 degrees or above 100 degrees Fahrenheit can affect the stability and the ability of the motor oil to effectively lubricate the engine so very low temperatures can result in the formation of sediments in the motor oil.

Seeing that you’re from Ontario, I’m sure you get very cold winters every now and then, but it’s not all year round, like in the northern parts of Siberia or poles of the earth, so as long as you replace it with full synthetic once a year it’ll be fine.

I drive mine more frequently than you, but my car averages less than 10,000 miles a year, much less than the typical yearly average, and I have replaced the oil on it once a year without any issues.

www.blackstone-labs.com/

[John 070]

To be realistic, if you drove 1,800 miles, it's pretty hard to say if the oil would degrade such that after 12 mos., you had better get it out of the motor and replaced...I would have to say common sense says it's fine going beyond 12 mos.

BMW as a mfg. can't arbitrarily say 2 yrs. if that is harmful to the vehicles. After all, since most of the cars are leased, they would be harming the lessor, which is their subsidiary.

I dunno, maybe if my car I'd change it, but I don't think that the motor turns into a pumpkin at 12 mos. 1 day, with so few miles on the oil. No matter what, it's a waste of good oil for sure.

[Amizzi]

Originally Posted by John 070

p.s. why change the filter more often than the oil itself? Supposedly we too would get free filters through FCP (haven't tried it yet), but doesn't mean I'd want to change it more often...

Thanks guys,

It looks like I'll be driving with the oil till the 12 month mark and just change it to be on the safe side .
The reason I change the filter half way is just something I've adopted back in the day when I was racing. Obviously the job of the filter is to capture the inpureities out of the oil. I found that I would loose a little bit of oil psi as the filter became saturated .
The few bucks for the filter and the 5min of time it takes I just drop in another filter, especially as convenient as it is located on the N54.
I use this method on 2 of my other vehicles since new, after 5-6000k the oil drops out clear and my wife's suv has 200,000+km .

[BravoJohny33]

I think the BMW dealership put the wrong date on my oil change so I think I am going a year a 6 months on one oil change.

[Iwejun]

Get a Blackstone and be done with the questions. I was using Rotella T6 in my 350 Drw Super Duty 6.0 and was slowly creeping up to 10k between oil changes on Blackstone analysis advice, with 134k on turbo pulling 21k# all the time. This was an injection system using 20,000 psi to run the injectors, talk about shearing the oil. Two or three lab runs and you'll begin to see what's really going on in you engine due to wear. Really what your trying to avoid is coking the bearings on the turbos and I'll bet the water pump run on does a good job of cooling that in addition to the oil. As far as all this certification and warranty changes, they just want you in the door to service so they will find something.
But what the hey, my boat dealer wanted to charge me $185 every year for a new impeller to stay under warranty. Now I change it every three or four years for $47 plus tax myself cuz I'm old and I learned.