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Oil Change Frequency?

Drooling_Dog

Full Member
Joined
Sep 12, 2002
Messages
61
The dealer says every 3,000 miles. The manual says to drive it until the light comes on, and that it could be up to 100,000 miles.

What do ya'll do?
 
Read your owners manual. 3000 miles under severe service. normal service wait till the light comes on, not to exceed 10,000 miles.
This sounds like another case of a dealer trying to generate money with excessive oil changes.
Try another dealer.
 
When the light comes on for me...which if you read the article in the first CAFCNA mag with link located on home page of this site explains how it works....I think it maxes out at 7500 miles though
 
The change oil light must work off the mileage as it came on around 7500 miles on mine and I had just done an oil change on it the week before and it was its 3rd change.

I'd recommended changing the oil ever 3000 to 3500 miles. ?7500 mile intervals are for normal driving which no one does. ?You may be able to go longer with synthesis but I had a bad experience with one of them in a 5.0 HO engine and went back to the real stuff.

The AV is the easiest vehicle I've ever changed the oil on. ?The drain screw and filter are right next to each other and easy to access. ?It's only $10 to $12 to do it yourself.

If your AV is new I'd due the 1st change at 1,000 miles. ?While they don't use break in oil any longer it's still a good idea to change the original oil early to remove any shaving and derby from when the engine was made. ?
 
Johnny D read the article in CAFCNA mag ....It explains how it works and looks at driving and other things....

Maybe you do drive normal >:D
 
Check the thread, "When to change the oil". It has a great deal of info on this and also on synthetic oil.
 
ygmn said:
Johnny D read the article in CAFCNA mag ....It explains how it works and looks at driving and other things....

Maybe you do drive normal >:D

WHO YOU CALLING NORMAL! ?That?s how Boudreaux and Thibodeaux got a feuden. ? ;)

OK, I read the article and see they're using some computerized quasi algorithm based on temperature and driving pattern to figure out when the light comes on. ?As it doesn't actually sense or test the oil and this is a new feature from the general I think I'll play it safe and stick to what has worked for me for over thirty years. ?Hard to teach old dogs new tricks. ? ?

 
Johnny_D said:
WHO YOU CALLING NORMAL! ?That’s how Boudreaux and Thibodeaux got a feuden. ? ;)

OK, I read the article and see they're using so computerized quasi algorithm based on temperature and driving pattern to figure out when the light comes on. ?As it doesn't actually sense or test the oil and this is a new feature from the general I think I'll play it safe and stick to what has worked for me for over thirty years. ?Hard to teach old dogs new tricks. ? ?
I'm with you. If they don't actually test the oil, then how do it know?
 
Mine came on for the first time at 7000, but already changed twice...mine gets low mileage on it only work 1/2 mile from the house...so the changes were at six month intervals...but what I liked was how you turned the warning light off...Now how was that? Click you heels three times and say theres now place like home..no place like home....or something like that ;)
 
WVBubba said:
but what I liked was how you turned the warning light off...Now how was that? ?Click you heels three times and say theres now place like home..no place like home....or something like that ;)
Good One (y)
 
Hey- FWIW, I was doing some oil change research for my motorcycle, and I came up with an interesting article on "the myth of the 3000 mile oil change" or something to that effect. I know that when I change the oil in my 88 Chevy c1500, or my 84 Dodge Ram 250, the oil is pretty much hammered into varnish after 3-4k. In my wife's Avalon on the other hand, The oil is golden and clear at 5-6k. All of the vehicles have similar mileage, about 140k or so, but the engine with the sophisticated engine management system seems to have less need for frequent changes. I expect that the Avalanche, with it's state of the art engine electronics, will run pretty close to optimal most of the time. If you do a lot of towing, or primarily short-hop driving where the engine never fully warms up, I would urge you to change your oil frequently. If you do a fair amout of easy highway miles, you can probably go 6-7k between changes, especially if you use synthetic. I go 5k on synthetic in the bike, but a bike's wet clutch and trans (which are lubricated with the engine's oil) tend to impose a lot more shear load on the oil (due to the plates and gears) than the engine would alone, and therefore wear it faster. Check this article- http://oilanalysis.com/learning_cen...p?articleid=263&relatedbookgroup=Lubrication2

YOCIMV, Bill
(Your Oil Change Interval May Vary)
 
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