Wow, after seeing that picture I might have to rethink trusting the computer. With what I read on here about prices for having done at the dealer I might have to do it myself. Any warranty issues with doing that?

 

Not sure what it cost at the dealer but I would find a local Mini mechanic or BMW shop. The filter is a little unique, I would not trust Jiffy lube with anything I own anyway, not even the mower. And on top of it, I think they use Penzoil

 

Your $$ figures tell me you're paying someone else a lot of dough to change your oil instead of doing it yourself. You are throwing away a lot of money when doing the job yourself is so simple. I just did my first oil change last week at 1800 miles, will do again at 7000, again at 12,000. BTW, I spilled 3 tiny drops of oil on the garage floor well out in front of the car when I was handling/looking at the oil filter as it was being held in the oil filter cap after removal. A good guy on this forum named Robin posted the entire procedure for you to see in another string.
DIY, it goes like this over 100,000 miles. IF you go to 12k before each change, that's 8.33 oil changes in 100k miles of driving. Figure you spent six dollars for each quart of castrol full synthetic and ten dollars for each filter. (I'm trying to keep this simple, and the numbers are close enough). So that's five quarts time six bucks, equals thirty bucks, and ten for a filter. That's forty bucks an oil change. Take that times 8.33 and you spent $333 (rounded off) for oil changes over 100,000 miles.
Now, let's figure 100,000 miles with DIY oil change, $40 in oil and filter, at five thousand mile intervals. That is twenty oil changes at $40 oil and filter each change. That's $800. 800-333 = $467 more money you spent over 100,000 miles. So each mile you drive, you spent an extra (get ready, cuz here it comes) .000467 of a DOLLAR. So in every 100 miles of driving, you spent less than AN EXTRA NICKEL, .0467 OF A DOLLAR. Up here in Northern California, I'm paying over/under $3.50 a gallon for gasoline, and I'm getting around, say 32 mpg,(at worst, average) so I spend ten bucks for GAS every hundred miles. How about that extra nickel I spent? Man, I can't feel bad about that.
My case for the more frequent change is this: I saw the post from the fellow who leaves the oil in his "old truck" some incredible high number. This Mini Cooper S develops a LOT of HEAT. A LOT OF IT. HEAT creates FRICTION, friction causes WEAR. Heat also breaks down your lubricant, whether it's dyno oil or full synth oil. That twin scroll turbo wants nice clean oil that's working 100%, not 50%, not 60%. And it doesn't like SLUDGE. Try this: Pull your mini into your (hopefully) enclosed garage when the garage is nice and cool, but the car has been run pretty good. Close the garage door, and open the hood on your car. I assume the garage is pretty well sealed up...no open side door or windows. Now go in the house, leaving the Mini S sitting with the hood up. Come back out in an hour. Check the temp in the garage, just how it feels to you. Feel around on the top of that engine. Still a lot of heat, eh?
I rest my case. A nickel every hundred miles. Can you afford it? I can.
I hope this makes some sense to this forum's members. My point is, it just doesn't cost much money to do 5k changes if it's DIY, and you can master the procedure real easy.
I want to suggest also that you all invest in a set of Protech jack ramps. They are $44.95 a pair. They CLEAR your Mini's front end. You can drive your well warmed up Mini right up on them if you set them in place before you go for your warmup run prior to changing your oil, then drive in and go carefully up the two steps. Your flat oil storage/change pan will fit right under the car, and you put on a latex glove and use that allen wrench to spin out the drain plug after unscrewing the filler cap so there's no vacuum. The oil will pour right out fast and hot. I find it best for me to let the car sit about TWO HOURS, till everything COOLS DOWN and I don't have to worry about burning my fingers. Things will still be WARM but not hot on/around the engine. When you move the coolant tank out of the way, take an old cotton t-shirt and stuff it down close and all around the oil filter cannister, because when you use the 1/2" drive and that big socket to pull the cap off, a tiny bit of oil will spill. A tiny bit still makes a mess if you let it, but the t-shirt, tucked in all around the area, will prevent that. When you turn the cap off the top of the filter and lift the cap up, the filter should come right up with it. Just have another rag in your hand to get under the filter right away and lift it away from the car. It's a really easy process, and it's actually kind of fun.
I'm done. I hope my little math excercise, ballpark figures and all, has made you think about that extra NICKEL you're spending for every 100 miles of driving if you decide to go change your oil every 5k instead of every 12k. And I personally think that going beyond 12k is just not good business for your car.
Can I at least get everyone to agree, even if you DO personally feel that it's a waste of synthetic oil to change it at 5k, that spending that extra NICKEL every hundred miles makes this no big deal financially? Please?
Now, let's all wander into the kitchen for warm milk and chocolate chip cookies, and agree that we agree to disagree or agree and say that we'll all be friends and get along. Let's not let a little mildly An*l oil changing come between a group of people who all share the love of the Mini. How about it, boys and girls?? Huh?
Oh man, it's thirty seven minutes past midnight and I have to get up at six a.m. Goodnight!
And be SURE to properly dispose of your oil so that it is recycled. Filter, too. Don't be just throwing that filter in the trash. I take both to Kragen. Call em first and make sure they have room in the tank, etc.

 

Although 15 years ago I worked for a very lareg auto manufacturer in Europe in the Marketing dept and I can confirm that it was us that put pressure to increase the oil change mileage from 6000m to 9000m at the time. It was done because large fleets bought our cars and we needed to reduce our TCO (Total Cost of Ownership) to make our product seem to cost less to maintain.

I am not an expert in oil or filters but if you don't intend to keep your car longer than the waranty then go ahead and follow the service schedule.
If you intend to keep it longer then make sure you buy the extended warranty, or at least obtain an expert opinion on when your oil should be changed based upon your driving style and local weather.

 

Ok folks…..play along here with me……You have just developed a new internal combustion engine for mass market use. After thousands of hours of testing, you know that the oil replacement interval, under normal driving conditons, is 10,000 miles with full synthetic oil. In preparing the owners manual for your customers, what do you recommend as the oil change interval??? You would be conservative, as YOU would have to pay to replace engines that fail under warranty. So maybe you recommend 7500 miles, maybe slightly less under extreme, dusty conditions.

If the customer changes the oil earlier than that, he is wasting his money. We have been bombarded for years and years with commercials and print adds screaming “Change your oil every 3000 miles” until it became the norm. Check your new car manuals, even with dino-oil most recommend a 7500 mile change interval.
I, for one have always followed my owners manual for scheduled maintenance to the “T”.

No, I would not “jump off a bridge” if BMW told me to, but I will change fluids and have services done by the book, as it’s their product and they wrote the book!!
Hey it’s a free country, if changing full synthetic oil earlier than you need to gives you “peace of mind”, fine donate some more money to the rich oil companies, they are glad to have it. Just my opinion, and I’ll stick to it!

Happy motoring to all!

 

Those pictures of the filthy BMW motor are impressive. A little hard for me to believe that much dirt could accumulate in a new oil filter in one year but impressive (maybe the car followed a wagon train across the nation). The shot inside the filler cap doesn't show any oil at all. It looks like somene dumped a cup of dirt saturated with some oil in there. To me there are 2 issues involved: How long can the oil be used before it breaks down and fails to lubricate the engine parts properly? Synthetic oils last much longer than the old ones. And how long does it take for the system to accumulate enough dirt to saturate the filter (as it did in the picture of the filthy one from the BMW)? That has a lot to do with how easlily dirt can get into the system, mainly via the aircleaner I would think. If no dirt could ever get in, the filter would stay clean forever and the only issue is how long the old takes to break down. If dirt gets in very easily the filter goes bad quickly no matter how long the oil lasts. Maybe the Mini doesn't let much dirt in compared to that BMW. Maybe the synthetic oil really lasts 20,000 miles without breaking down (I don't know). Does anybody know the science behind this? I think that the 2 things that cause engine wear are friction and heat. Even though I have been defending the long service intervals it only costs us about $50 to have the oil/filter changed by a shop.

 

I plan on changing the oil (only) myself 1/2 way between scheduled services and let my Mini dealer change the filter and oil as recommended by Mini.

 

This thread brought out the curiosity in me so I did a google search on synthetic motor oil life, one of the first links that came up was http://neptune.spacebears.com/cars/s.../oil-life.html. It appears as if they've completed a study on a couple of synthetic oils, including Mobil 1. About halfway down the page is their past results which list these results.

 

The engineers who designed this engine and its maintenance schedule are smarter than all of us. They don't want the engines to fail, do they?????

Oh boy, now that's funny. (see my signature for explanation)

 

Yes, of course I top it up with fresh oil after a filter change, and its about a quart on the pickup (filter capacity plus oil consumption) . And when I say it burns no oil, the oil consumption is the same as when the truck was new. I only top it up at the filter change.

A friend of mine pulled the head off an engine that he ran similarly for 100,000 miles on the same oil with 15,000 mile filter intervals, and the cylinder walls still showed the hone marks.

I have kept all of my vehicles for well over 100,000 miles and have never had a lubrication related engine failure. In fact, the only internal engine failure was a stripped nylon tooth timing gear, which was updated to all metal by the manufacturer.

Though I am a mechanical engineer, I am by no means a lubrication expert. But I am guessing BMW consulted with one or two when they established the service intervals. All I am doing is citing anecdotal evidence which has no statistical significance, for whatever that's worth.

 

Amazing! I love these 'oil change interval' threads. Almost as good as 'which sparkplug?'.

Motor on....

 

Ahh yes... the socratic style of discussion.

 

The comment that engine wear decreases as the oil "ages" was interesting to me. I always thought that new oil would provide better lubrication for the engine no matter what. Shows how much we really know about the science of engines and oil. Might that have something to do with the long service intervals recommended by Mini? True, that was a 4 year old testing result with a different car but hey, isn't that new news for most of us? One thing becomes clear: changing the oil at 500-1000 miles to get rid of the dreaded "breakin metal fragments" is a bunch of bull. There's no reason to do that unless you just can't sleep at night.

 

I'll let you all know when my engine goes. One of these days I'm gonna pop off the valve cover to see what it looks like, but from what you can see peeking in the filler hole it looks pretty clean. I have almost 146,000 miles, and have always followed the OBC as far as when to do an oil change. I think I've had 5 done so far.

Nik

 

please do, i would be VERY interested to see what it looks like. 146,000 miles. thats awesome. is your supercharger original?

 

Yup! Its had the 15% reduction pulley on for about 120,000 miles now.

(I do have a replacement SC in the garage ready to put on when it does go )

Nik

 

145000/5=29000 miles per oil change. That doesn't sound right.
145000/ 5 years = 29000 miles per year. That's a lot of miles per year. Freeway miles are easier on the car than city miles.

 

Could be 6 changes (don't feel like looking it up right now ), but they have been between 15k and 23k each time.

I'm usually around 32-33k per year. Its about 4.5 years old, and the first year I was nice to it....

Nik

 

On Googling, two factors often mentioned by reputable sources (not forum opinions) with regard to extended oil change intervals: 1. Engine design is a big factor. The most recently designed engines are much easier on oil than previous designs. I wonder if the volume flow-controlled oil pump and the on-demand cooling might be factors in our engines? Anyhow, hopefully our very newly designed Mini Cooper power plants are as gentle on oil as these long extended oil change frequency aproaches indicate. 2. Synthetic oils keep getting better and better allowing longer and longer intervals between oil changes.

As for pictures of oil sludge and the like, the pictures shown earlier in this thread leave the impression that that particular engine was run very hard (some of that oil shows signs of being richously cooked). In my research, no sources that I came across recommended full period extended oil changes for cars that are run very hard or cars that do nothing but stop-and-go driving.

Audi forums I've been involved with in the past ran these same discussions. Lab tests were done on synthetic oils after 7,500 miles. They came back pretty good. I hope someone on this forum is lab study oriented and will run some sequenced oil tests (5,000, 10,000, 15,000 mile intervals for instance) on their R56 (personally I'd like to see it done on the S because of the turbo - turbos run hot). As far as the R53 is concerned, one Mobil 1 site I came across claims they ran 15,000 mile interval oil changes on an R53 S with no real degradation in their oil (stayed within spec).

Until I hear some horror stories that convince me otherwise, I'm going to go with once a year oil change intervals (I drive less than 15,000 miles/year). I'm going to trust them on this, at least for now.

 

We talked about this in a different oil-changing thread. The site noted in this thread showed a sharper rise of wear metals earlier in the oil change (within 3000 miles) and then a decline in the amount of accumulation. The conclusion derived from this correlation is that the engine wears faster with newer oil, or that newer oil doesn't protect as well as "older" oil.

Statistics or science... one rule of thumb is "Correlation does not equal Causality"; but that's exactly what's been violated here. Consider the following analogy:

I clean my kitchen counter daily. I start with a clean rag, and use the same rag for a week. I note the number of "contaminates" in the rag after each use. Initially, I see a sharp increase in the number of contaminates; but by the 3rd day there's very little rise of contaminates in the rag. Anyone who's cleaned a kitchen knows that the reason is that the rag is dirty! and reaches a state of equilibrium. The rag is saturated with contaminates and is just smearing the dirt around because it can't hold any more. Using the logic from the oil test though, the answer would be that the counter top gets dirtiest right before cleaning it with a fresh rag. Therefore, to keep your counters cleaner... use a dirty rag!

The absurdity of the argument is more clear through the analogy than it is in the oil test... probably because more people have experience with cleaning kitchen counters than the workings of engines or the engineering of oil.

Oils have many additives. Of them, there are detergents and dispersants. Detergents clean the parts of contaminates, and dispersants suspend them in the oil. The dispersants are analogous to the rag. There's only so many contaminates that can be held, and fresh oil (clean rag) will pick up more contaminates which the old oil (dirty rag) simply can't - because it's almost saturated.

If you want to learn about oil... go to www.bobistheoilguy.com or the forums at www.noria.com .

 

I agree with clover...........5k = peace of mind. (soon to join the 100k club).
I've had far too many cars with in excess of 150k each, with no problems, doing 5 k oil changes to change now because someone at BMW decided 12 k sounded right. They won't have to pay for my new engine, I will.

 

Anyone know what brand of synthetic they use at the MINI dealers?

 

castrol

 

Amazing, this same thread comes up time and time again. NAM needs a FAQ

See 20 ways you waste money on your car

"3,000-mile oil changes. Manufacturers typically suggest 5,000 miles, 7,500 miles or even longer intervals between oil changes (many car markers now include oil-life monitors that tell you when the oil is dirty -- sometimes as long as 15,000 miles.)"

Do whatever makes you happy. I think if you actually read your maintenaince manual it will say a minimum of once/year regardless of the mileage.

For those arguing BMW knows what its doing ... one question:

Does BMW care what happens to your care out of warranty?
(my answer: they better if they want repeat business)
For those arguing much shorter changes ...

Do you think BMW doesn't know what its doing?
(my answer: Do you know more than the people who made your car?)
Interesting questions but the fact is, some cars are going to longer and longer service intervals to save money to the consumer?

 

Ah Theseus' paradox http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
Grandfather's old axe lasts forever "it's had three new heads and four new handles but it's still the same old axe."