[Gautam]

Originally Posted by dscabra

I find it interesting to read these threads. I change my own oil and do it when the manufacture recommends a little before typically. For those that feel that more frequent changes are helpful in extending the longevity of their engines, how many will actually keep the car for any appreciable time past the warranty? I'd bet that a significant number of new BMWs on the road are leased and will be turned in before the warranty is expired. If you are really concerned, send a sample of your oil in with each oil change for a detailed analysis. That will tell you what's actually going on inside the engine and it's a lot cheaper than doing more frequent oil changes than necessary.

I’m well past factory warranty and hope to keep my m550 for quite a bit longer. Every 5k vs every 10k amounts to around $200 extra per year for me, well worth it for peace of mind imho.

[dscabra]

Originally Posted by Joe-BMW33

I'm just a fan of cars and the car community. I do in fact think about the next guy and I take a lot of pride in passing along all the TLC. I'm definitely not of the mindset of "not my problem" or in the camp of let's save money or be lazy and fuck the next guy over because I won't have the car in a year. Just not in my DNA. I want to be the guy you want to buy a car from.

I understand and wasn't trying to insinuate that it's okay to NOT properly maintain your car if you know you won't be keeping it, but rather that it also isn't necessary to overkill either. I maintain detailed maintenance records on all my cars. I sold a 16-year-old F250 last year that I had purchased brand new and provided the new owner with a stack of maintenance records that was over two inches thick. He was definitely impressed and appreciated the fact that the truck had been well maintained and had a completely documented maintenance history.

[Joe-BMW33]

Originally Posted by dscabra

I understand and wasn't trying to insinuate that it's okay to NOT properly maintain your car if you know you won't be keeping it, but rather that it also isn't necessary to overkill either. I maintain detailed maintenance records on all my cars. I sold a 16-year-old F250 last year that I had purchased brand new and provided the new owner with a stack of maintenance records that was over two inches thick. He was definitely impressed and appreciated the fact that the truck had been well maintained and had a completely documented maintenance history.

Understood, I knew you weren't saying exactly what I was saying. I was just saying I don't treat a car with the mindset of it won't be around when and/if it fails, so don't go overboard. My overboard is most likely overkill on most things, but I do think the BMW 10k oil change interval is bullshit. As I said, miraculously this has changed over the years on whether they are paying for the first three years or not.

5k is a good interval.

All good.

[LogicalApex]

Originally Posted by 2022M550i

Blackstone labs may disagree with your thoughts.

Feel free to post your, or a link to, a Blackstone report showing the G30 interval is too long and needs to be shortened. I haven't yet seen one.

It really doesn't matter to me how people spend their money so I don't really care all that much one way or the other in the oil debate. I'll stick to the OCI.

I'm just extremely analytical. So I find the "gut" nature of the intervals people come up with middle amusing. It is, as I said earlier, any number between 1 - 10K based on the phase of the moon or the year the owner got their first car.

I'll have my G30, which I purchased new, well past 100K miles. Which is unlike the majority of G30 owners. So if I'm wrong I'll be around to say so.

But, do whatever makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside

[Joe-BMW33]

Originally Posted by LogicalApex

Feel free to post your, or a link to, a Blackstone report showing the G30 interval is too long and needs to be shortened. I haven't yet seen one.

It really doesn't matter to me how people spend their money so I don't really care all that much one way or the other in the oil debate. I'll stick to the OCI.

I'm just extremely analytical. So I find the "gut" nature of the intervals people come up with middle amusing. It is, as I said earlier, any number between 1 - 10K based on the phase of the moon or the year the owner got their first car.

I'll have my G30, which I purchased new, well past 100K miles. Which is unlike the majority of G30 owners. So if I'm wrong I'll be around to say so.

But, do whatever makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside

That 4-banger with the EV helping the little engine that could is an outlier. I am sure you know what an outlier is being analytical and data driven. You will easily turn 100k miles even if you never changed the oil.

A hard working, hot running, hard working, twin turbo V8 needs the oil changed more often than 10k miles, I don't need data, probability, standard deviation etc. to tell me that. I've owned a lot of cars.

[LogicalApex]

Originally Posted by Joe-BMW33

That 4-banger with the EV helping the little engine that could is an outlier. I am sure you know what an outlier is being analytical and data driven. You will easily turn 100k miles even if you never changed the oil.

A hard working, hot running, hard working, twin turbo V8 needs the oil changed more often than 10k miles, I don't need data, probability, standard deviation etc. to tell me that. I've owned a lot of cars.

We can likely agree to disagree.

The PHEV has a harsher operating environment for the engine not an easier one. For instance, the PHEV can have the engine cold started under heavy acceleration at 10F outside while doing 70MPH on the highway and wanting to crank it up to 100MPH. That's not a start condition you can create in the ICE variation (especially with how well BMW insulates the engine it heats up quickly). Remember, the PHEV can start iced cold when it runs out of juice and the engine needs to handle whatever stress that creates and NE winters are the worst for that. And little is more stressful for an engine than running cold under high stress.

BMW put the detuned 4-banger in the PHEV until the 545e due to it being under heavier stress than normal.

The problem with using personal anecdotal data is that you're biased by previous conditions that don't carry forward. That's my point earlier. People come up with their number based on variations in their own experiences or whatnot, but not driven by data on the car we're discussing -- The G30.

[Chappers 71]

Well for my two Penneth my old twin turbo N54 35i, running a tune & with a few bolt on go faster bits ran very hot with an oil temp of 120-130°C (250-266°F) & that managed 125,000 miles with 80,000 of them during my ownership & 65,000 of those miles running 370bhp & only had its oil changed when the oil service indicator asked for it, always had Castrol oil & a genuine bmw filter.
A quick check on the mot website tells me it’s now done 131,000 miles & is still running.
That’s despite me mostly having driven it like my hair was on fire, taken it on track at Lydden Hill race circuit on two occasions & having taken it to Santa Pod 11 times & averaging 8 x 1/4 mile runs on each occasion.

[BMW012]

there are those who smoked a pack of cigarettes a day and lived to 100. there are those who never smoked a cigarette in there life and died at 60.

do whatever makes you happy.

[Marc_911]

Oil change at 5k makes me more comfortable, 01 M550

[NGT2]

BMW maintenance plan was still active when I bought my car, so I waited until my SA could get the oil change approved. It was a little under 10k miles. Maybe 8,500 or so. He said when you get within a couple thousand miles, they’ll usually pay for it.

The plan expires in Feb. so I won’t be able to get another one out of them. I’ll probably try to change it somewhere around every 6,000-7,500 or so.

I’ve asked techs at different dealers about this. BMW. Chevy. GMC. Always the same answer. The oil is more efficient than it used to be and the 3k mile oil change is no longer useful. On first ask, they all say 10k miles (or whatever the recommended interval is) is fine. Upon the second ask, they all say something like “well, I do mine every X miles” and it’s always in that 6,000-7,500 range.

I’ve had it 8 months and put around 4,500 miles on it. So if I change it at the 6-7.5k range like I said, it’s still only every 9-10 months or so.

I bought it with 25k miles and it was owned by BMW before I bought it, so I’m sure they did the oil changes based on when the car said it was time.

[admranger]

I changed at <2500 miles this year as that's all I put on her in a year. My back made it untenable to drive for most of the year. I'm wasting this car...

[Neusser]

Originally Posted by Joe-BMW33

Understood, I knew you weren't saying exactly what I was saying. I was just saying I don't treat a car with the mindset of it won't be around when and/if it fails, so don't go overboard. My overboard is most likely overkill on most things, but I do think the BMW 10k oil change interval is bullshit. As I said, miraculously this has changed over the years on whether they are paying for the first three years or not.

5k is a good interval.

All good.

FWIW, I have owned four cars from the German big three, several for about 9-10 years, and I never had an issue with 20km or 30km oil changes.

Over here, if you change your oil earlier, you will be laughed out of the shop, unless you have something older or very special.

[Gautam]

Would love to hear first hand experience of an N62/N63 with 100k miles of city driving at 10-20k mile or higher intervals.

Anyone? Bueller?

[LogicalApex]

Originally Posted by Gautam

Would love to hear first hand experience of an N62/N63 with 100k miles of city driving at 10-20k mile or higher intervals.

Anyone? Bueller?

CBS would shorten the interval in that case. The 10K/1Y (US) is an “up to”. If the car is driven in harsher conditions it will shorten the interval automatically. Which is why BMW has their appropriately named Condition Based Service system. Whereas other OEMs have fixed intervals.

So you’ll have to come up with another contrived scenario to try and find a data point for “BMW CBS is wrong”.

Nothing wrong with deviating because it makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside though.

[Gautam]

Originally Posted by LogicalApex

CBS would shorten the interval in that case. The 10K/1Y (US) is an “up to”. If the car is driven in harsher conditions it will shorten the interval automatically. Which is why BMW has their appropriately named Condition Based Service system. Whereas other OEMs have fixed intervals.

So you’ll have to come up with another contrived scenario to try and find a data point for “BMW CBS is wrong”.

Nothing wrong with deviating because it makes you feel warm and fuzzy inside though.

It’s not a contrived scenario. It’s what I hope becomes reality for my car. If someone pipes in that they’ve managed to get one of these engines to 6 figure mileage trouble-free with infrequent changes then that’d be a data point to encourage it.

To put it simply I don’t fully trust BMW with anything having to do with these engines (though if I didn’t ultimately have faith in the n63tu2 I wouldn’t have bought one) They have a bad rap, but I’m on my second BMW V8 with a positive experience. Whether it’s true or not we’ll never know, but I like to believe it’s partly due to me treating them with an abundance of caution.

[LogicalApex]

Originally Posted by Gautam

It’s not a contrived scenario. It’s what I hope becomes reality for my car. If someone pipes in that they’ve managed to get one of these engines to 6 figure mileage trouble-free with infrequent changes then that’d be a data point to encourage it.

To put it simply I don’t fully trust BMW with anything having to do with these engines (though if I didn’t ultimate have faith in the n63tu2 I wouldn’t have bought one) They have a bad rap, but I’m on my second BMW V8 with a positive experience. Whether it’s true or not we’ll never know, but I like to believe it’s partly due to me treating them with an abundance of caution.

It read as contrived to me as you’re asking for data points where BMW CBS is ignored and changes are done very late. I don’t think you’ll find many owners on here who skip recommended oil changes.


I also wouldn’t trust any BMW to stand up well to skipping every other oil change (for 20K as you asked about) for instance.

[Gautam]

The insinuation in this thread is that it’s foolish to go below 10k and completely acceptable to go up to 30k km, so I gave a range accordingly.

[LogicalApex]

Originally Posted by Gautam

The insinuation in this thread is that it’s foolish to go below 10k and completely acceptable to go up to 30k km, so I gave a range accordingly.

It gets a bit mixed by location. In Europe BMW has a longer OCI than the US. So the posters from Germany and the UK have cited based on their OCI. I presumed CA in your sidebar to be California which would put you under US OCI recommendations.

But perhaps you’re more asking for anyone who has 100K miles or more on those engines who stuck to the BMW CBS intervals.

[NGT2]

Originally Posted by LogicalApex

It gets a bit mixed by location. In Europe BMW has a longer OCI than the US. So the posters from Germany and the UK have cited based on their OCI. I presumed CA in your sidebar to be California which would put you under US OCI recommendations.

But perhaps you’re more asking for anyone who has 100K miles or more on those engines who stuck to the BMW CBS intervals.

That’s how I read it

[Joe-BMW33]

Originally Posted by Neusser

FWIW, I have owned four cars from the German big three, several for about 9-10 years, and I never had an issue with 20km or 30km oil changes.

Over here, if you change your oil earlier, you will be laughed out of the shop, unless you have something older or very special.

We just don’t know what to do with our money over here😂

[Neusser]

Originally Posted by Joe-BMW33

We just don’t know what to do with our money over here😂

There is a big cultural difference. Many Americans just spend. Germans have thrift engrained in them.

Unfortunately things of real value (houses, etc.) are also thee times as expensive here, so saving is a must if you ever want to build any kind of modest wealth.

[NGT2]

Originally Posted by Neusser

There is a big cultural difference. Many Americans just spend. Germans have thrift engrained in them.

Unfortunately things of real value (houses, etc.) are also thee times as expensive here, so saving is a must if you ever want to build any kind of modest wealth.

At this point, the American economy is built on spending. If we all got thrifty at the same time, there would be a recession. Many Americans value stuff over wealth. I’ve been guilty of it at times, myself.