So I'm reading through the MINI TSB's and come across this rather disturbing bit of trivia. Appears to fly in the face of what's being bandied about concerning intervals.

"TSB #MO1 02 03 - However, all MINI's should have an engine oil change at a minimum of once a year, regardless of whether synthetic or petroleum-based oil is used."

I'm still a 3-5k mile change guy......Les

 

Why is this disturbing? It says the exact same thing in the car's maintenaince manual that comes with the owners manual. For those that drive more than 10K miles they go by the little countdown meter. For those that drive under 10K miles a year you change it once a year. Sounds normal to me.

 

If you take your MINI if its been a year they'll service it even if it hasn't reached the service interval mileage

 

Yeah, that happened to us (even though we did our own oil change in between ). MINI had no problem with changing it after a year even though the indicator was nowhere near zero.

On the same subject, I just finished changing my own oil yesterday. The last MINI dealer oil change was done at 27k miles. The service indicator was reset. I did one myself at 36k and now I'm at 45k. Our service indicator says I still have 2k miles left before new oil is needed. If I were going with service indicator recommendations, I'd have 20k miles intervals .

 

My May '02 build MCS owners manual does not talk about oil changes other than at the 12k mile intervals. Perhaps in the newer manuals it's better communicated. However as I mentioned, I'm a 3-5k kind a guy. So, I thought it best to at least bring it up in a public forum that if you drive less than 12k per year, it's recommended to change the oil regardless of what the interval counter says. I'm betting that some folks don't know this.

...Les

 

Your MA should have told you about it when you bought the MINI. Service it when the counter reaches 0 or once a year whichever occurs first.

 

Lots of interesting stuff at
http://motoringfile.com/2006/03/02/a...ers/#more-4699

For example, the service interval is dynamic, based on how you drive

If you come in because a year passed but you are not within 300 mi of needing service:

 

Maybe there is miscommunication here. I said the Maintenaince manual that comes with the owners manual. Didn't the 02s come with a bunch of little manuals (like for the radio) besides the "owners manual"?

 

not sure about 02, but i have 2 manuals on my 03'. one regular owner's
manual, and one service related owner's manual.

both in spanish. (well it was, so had it replaced with english ones). hehehe.

 

And I thought is was the disturbing part of that post, aren't all MINI supposed to run a full synthetic?

 

i wish i could do it once a year... with all the driving i do now, its once a month!!

 

So what is your issue? If you want to change the oil every 3-5K miles, then do it (either yourself or take the car in for a change). The only qualification would be the or once a year (if the car is driven less than 3-5K miles per year). Personally, I would use the full synthetic Castrol oil that MINI sells and I would change the oil and filter myself every 5k miles or 12 months if I didn't run up the 5k mile interval.

If you are still under the MINI maintenance program, the dealer will do just an oil and filter change if you are about to hit the 12 month interval and are still showing miles remaining on the service interval counter. Then when you hit the >300 miles to zero, you can take the car in for its first service interval and get another oil and filter change (in addition to the rest of the initial service interval maintenance items). (This is an amplification on the second part of jdmarino's post above - there is more than an oil service that is performed as the first service where the service interval counter is reset.)