Since your reading and spelling skills are obviously a little weak, I will do my best to help you understand what I said.

First of all I have no "fanasty" about oil changing. I like to change my oil regularly at short intervals and you don't. THAT'S FINE! You don't have to EVER change your oil if you choose not to! For me, it is MY money, and I will change oil often if I choose to do so.

Secondly, I made NO comparison in ANY way between that old Ford engine and ANY MB engine. My point had NOTHING to do with ANY of your comments. I was merely talking about what short hops can do to an engine in general, in response to pmckecknies mention of short hop engines. Believe it or not, I had no thought of you OR your diatribe while I was writing that post.

Do you understand that???????????????

Also when have I "preached to the newbies about 3K oil changes?" Was it as recently as you preached to them about saving oil and how much it offends you because they might change it more often than you??????


LET ME BE CLEAR! I DON'T CARE HOW OFTEN ANYONE CHANGES THEIR OIL, MOST OF ALL YOU.

I skipped a lot of this thread, so forgive me if I'm off topic.

A lot of this conversation seems to be about how often you need to change your oil. We try to tell people when they can safely extend their oil changes because, hey, who doesn't like to save a little money? That being said, you can't go wrong with changing the oil often. Like they say, oil is cheap, engines are expensive.

Kristin Huff
Blackstone Labs

I agree 100%! I just got started doing maintenance work on my car, but have no doubt that even the few things I have so far achieved in that area... I wouldn't have been able to achieve as well without the help I got from those who give so generously and freely of their time and experience in this forum... I HEARTILY appreciate it!

I feel that disputes of the kind this thread is unfortunately an example of tend to be a waste of time and precious resources, which could instead be employed in much more productive ways...

Rino

This place is tame compared to my forum. In OD we would be insulting eachother now and a round of emails screaming for bans would already be out.:D

So I guess oil is a touchy subject for some?!

You think? ;)

Oh... :P

Yeah it seems that way, its like talking politics or religion.:D

Yup, read one, read them all. But it is interesting to see how long he will keep going, and going, and going....

Guess what Larry,
I changed the oil in my 500SEL yesterday. It only had about 1400 miles on the oil but it had been 6 months. Well Know what, it didn't complain at all. It just got a smile on its face and say thanks with a purrrrrrrrr. I am going to send the oil to Joe so he can put another 1,000,000 on it. That should make him happy.:) :) :)

I'm going to the OD forum. If any of you want to know the straight stuff about our cars, or life in general, check it out.:D

240Joe

So, if one owns a classic car and just takes it out for occasional Sunday drives, and to & from the car show, he/she should change the oil every 3 months and other fluids (i.e. brake, coolant) every two years? What exactly do car collectors do to care for their cars properly besides constantly polishing them?

And for a car that is driven infrequently, is there any benefit to using a synthetic oil like Mobil 1 or Amsoil if it's changed out every 3 months? Because...it seems very expensive to do this. Should the oil filter also be changed every 3 months in this instance?

Likewise, it would seem from this discussion that it would be wiser to buy an older car that has higher mileage that was regularly driven on the highway rather than a low mileage car that was only taken out on Sundays for short trips.

When buying a used car, what kinds of things would one look for (besides service records) of poor oil change frequency or a lot of short distance driving? Or is there no way to tell without tearing down the engine?

I know it is much better for any car to run hours at a time on the highway, but as I live & work in the city and the freeways around here are often stop & go, I'm guilty of a lot of short trips...and I know my Mercedes runs a lot smoother after I've taken at least a half hour drive on the highway. I try to combine errands when I can, but there's still a lot of turning on/turning off the engine with at least 15 minute cooling off periods in between....is that also a bad thing? I'd feel weird to leave it idling for more than about two minutes. Maybe I should have bought an electric car instead of a diesel.

LOL never stops to amuse me!

This is a lot to read just for amusement though.

Can you two paraphrase it next time please?

That's exactly and precisely the situation I am in... My driving is a succession of numerous but very short trips (1-2 miles/3-5 minutes) interspaced averagely by two-hour intervals... I know that some would say this is death to my engine... But what in heck can I do, aside from going on a long, leisure trip (100 miles?) during the weekend... Would that compensate adequately for the abuse from short trips during the week?

Rino