After reading up on this forum, I decided to not wait until the service light indicated my wife's Mini needed the oil change to go ahead and do it. Her driving style had her headed for a 20k oil change, and that fact was driving me crazy. She's at 13k miles now, and after looking at the old oil I wish I would have done it much earlier. It was flat out nasty looking and reminded me of the oil I'd remove from our old Jeep Liberty CRD. 4.4 quarts of Royal Purple 5w30 later, I'm happy that I did it. For those of you that are worried, it's a very easy oil change. I appreciated those plastic blocks on the underneath that are used as jack points. They were great.

Since I had the front end jacked up already I used my floor jack to raise the rear and rotate the tires since Mini doesn't do it. To my suprise I discovered that Mini uses wheel bolts instead of studs! I dropped one wheel on my fingernail after losening the last bolt, and I won't make that mistake again. I'm not sure why they went against using studs, but I wish they wouldn't have. It sure makes replacing the wheel much easier.

Other than that the oil change was really easy. I'm considering no longer than 10k miles and thinking about 5k miles. I know alot of you go the latter interval. I can't wait to get some new tires on there from Discount Tires, so I can let them do the rotation and balance.

 

I too changed my oil yesterday. Took the filter out and found that the idiots at O'reillys gave me a filter for an earlier model Mini that wouldn't fit so I put the old filter back in. No worries though as I recently purchased the Mini from Carmax in Wichita, Kansas and it had an oil and filter change about 1500 miles ago. I just wasn't convinnced they put in synthetic oil so I changed it early and put in 4 1/2 quarts of Castrol Syntec 5w30. I was indeed pretty easy to change oil in the Mini. I think I am going to change mine at 7500 right in between the guessed interval that the Mini dealer will be doing.

Gave it a Seafoam treatment before changing the oil. I was surprised that it didn't smoke much at all. Did the treatment, drove it 350 miles on a business trip and then dropped the oil.

 

There have been a lot of oil change debates on the interwebs, but I come down on the "what can it hurt to change it more often" side. I changed it in my Clubby at 3K as we were going on a long trip and what I found made me glad I did - as you said, it was nasty looking. Since then I also follow the twice as often, or about every 7500 mile interval. Costco frequently has Mobil1 for sale in a six pack, it makes it almost the same price as regular oil. I always use the factory filter tho, both to save a warranty hassle/question later and because I know it will fit properly and work.

 

Anybody who believes you're doing your car a favor by not changing the oil more frequently isn't thinking quite right. It's probably the same people who think that changing the fluid in your 90,000-mile automatic transmission will cause it to fail.

Hell... Even my MINI sales associate changes his own MINI's oil at more frequent intervals. He'll happily let MINI do it for free when the computer says it's time, but in between he does it himself.

$7 for a filter, $25 for oil, and 20 minutes of time is all it takes. Why wouldn't you want to do it yourself, and spend a little quality time getting more intimate with your MINI?

 

Same reason I don't sit around throwing dollar bills into the fireplace.

 

There is absolutely nothing wrong with changing your oil often other then being really expensive. Also they are starting to formulate oil and motors to run longer without an oil change becuase of the lazzy *** holes in the world that go 60k without changing the oild destroyer their motors. Remember that with the oil you can go (theoretically) forever without changing your oil as long as you make sure that it is at the right level. Now with that the reason they manufacturers(both car and oil) tell you change it like they do is becuase of the additives that are in it that are used to protect the motor.

 

5k religiously for oil/filter change and tire rototion for all of my vehicles. I never ever have problems so I think it is working.

 

I bought a couple of extra-long wheel bolts and ground off the heads. Now, when I rotate the tires, I pull out the top bolt first and thread one of these in by hand, then I pull out the rest of the bolts. The tire hangs on this one and is easy to get down. The new tire is easy to bolt back on because it hangs on the bolt and I can position it with one hand while I start the bolts with the other hand.

Here's a picture of the bolts I bought, one of them already ground.



I think they sell them this way also....

FWIW - I'm a 5k oil change guy...rotate the tires at the same time....

 

Awesome idea, and thanks for the tip!