Early oil change opinions

[jetfixer320]

I was just wondering what the general school of thought was here considering an early first oil change.
My 2025 LZ0 currently has about 600 miles on it & in about 5 weeks I'm taking it on a 2000+ mile road trip.
I've read all I can find & it generally falls into 2 categories:
1. Do your first oil change early (500+ miles) to get out new engine metal shavings, and other foreign material.
2. Just drive it and do your first change on the normal service schedule.

Yes, I've read the manual & it makes no mention of needing, or recommending an early first oil change.
(but as with most car manufacturers today, I trust what the manual says about how things work, but not so much how to make things last)

Suggestions?

 

[genestoy]

I always change my first at 2500 miles and just did my 2025 LZ0 at 2500 miles. Then 5000 mile intervals.

 

[Stbentoak]

I just changed mine a 1K miles myself, will probably take it in for the complimentary dealer oil change at 5k miles, as I probably will have a small laundry list of warranty fixes by then. Then she stays on the 5k rotation for life, I like that interval as it's a nice even number to keep track of... 5k 10k 15k etc.... New fuel filters every 3rd change or so....

 

[PPK_]

Two shots below... first on my 2025 SLT with the 3.0 and the second one my 2024 Yukon with the 5.3 liter. Both at 500 miles. Change it. look at how much is in the second picture... drain the oil.. and then siphon it out so you can see what was in the drain oil...

Pete

 

[Marky Dissod]

Never owned a new vehicle, but every time anyone asks, I recommend 1st oil change @ 500-1000 miles,
sooner if you want to keep it as long as possible.

Lady I know is (still) a livery driver / chauffeuse in NYC. Her 2011 Lincoln Town Car, which she bought brand new, recently hit 700,000 miles, original engine.
No one drives more 'daisy' than she. She also changed the oil at 500, 1500, 2500, and then every 3000 miles AT MOST.
5W30, whatever Group4 synthetic she could find on sale, sometimes even mixing them in the crankcase.

 

[Scarey]

I’ve talked to many town car operators and they all tell the same story of high mileage cars. Change the fluids regularly and drive frequently. I threatened to buy a town car as my daily driver and my wife wanted nothing to do with that .
I’m guessing the op is an Airbus mechanic. As you know aviation is all about preventative maintenance and to me that means early and frequent changes. Oil change parts are $75, and time is 30 minutes. I did my first at 1000 miles and will do the rest at 3000 intervals. Same for fuel filter. I think book says 30k but I’ll do at 15k intervals. Again , cheap and easy.

 

[Joseph Garcia]

I don't know about GM, but Honda puts an oil additive in their new engines, and they don't recommend changing the original oil early.

 

[steiny93]

I was just wondering what the general school of thought was here considering an early first oil change.
My 2025 LZ0 currently has about 600 miles on it & in about 5 weeks I'm taking it on a 2000+ mile road trip.
I've read all I can find & it generally falls into 2 categories:
1. Do your first oil change early (500+ miles) to get out new engine metal shavings, and other foreign material.
2. Just drive it and do your first change on the normal service schedule.

Yes, I've read the manual & it makes no mention of needing, or recommending an early first oil change.
(but as with most car manufacturers today, I trust what the manual says about how things work, but not so much how to make things last)

Suggestions?

follow the dash; unless changing it early makes you feal better, it's your money

how I got my opinion,
Find a large fleet, find the Operations Director, ask them how they handle their oil changes for the 100k so vehicles they have. I have yet to find one that is doing early oil changes. The fleets I've talked to are optimizing lifespan to 175k - 200k. That works for me.

 

[Z15]

You can do oil changes before their service interval, but its highly unlikely to make your vehicle last significantly longer than if they were maintained normally, but it will increase the cost of ownership.

 

[Scarey]

Gm does not use breakin oil. I don’t get this push back on early oil changes. Machining debris is common in a new engine, ask the 6.2 gas guys. Spend 90k on a truck and whine about a $75 oil change. Go ahead and wait till the idiot light comes on for your oil change.

 

[West 1]

Engine failures are almost always maintenance issues. People don’t change the oil or they overheat the engine. On high miles tear down it is very obvious when the owner changed oil regularly and those that push the miles on oil changes. If you sell your car as soon as warranty is up do what the manual demands for oil changes. If you own the car and want it to last I would not exceed 5,000 miles per change. Some engines have build flaws and fail due to those but 99% of failures are owner caused. GM and the late model 6.2L failures are an exception.

 

[Z15]

You make it sound like there is no oil filter on the engine. Any such debris would be caught and retained by the filter. If anything, changing the filter sooner makes more sense. All this concern about machining debris is much ado about nothing. The castings are thoroughly cleaned before assembly.

Throw your money away on unnecessary oil changes all you want. Its not cheap insurance, its a waste of resources.

For over 30 yrs I drove fleet vehicles as GPS surveyor for DOT. We were mandated to change oil at 5,000 and not a mile sooner (CC charge would not go through). I had 6 vehicles on my team, a K2500 suburban, 3 RAM 4x4's, F150 and F250 CC. Never had a engine go bad and all vehicles went well over 100,000 miles with many hours of idle time.

 

[Marky Dissod]

Never had a engine go bad and all vehicles went well over 100,000 miles ...

If the goal is to write off buying the next vehicle as the next business expense,
any schmuckdiot can reach 100,000 miles and sell the vehicle to another dooftard who also doesn't care about reaching 200,000 miles.
There's nothing to learn from maintenance goals that are not aiming past 250,000 miles.

 

[jetfixer320]

I’m guessing the op is an Airbus mechanic. As you know aviation is all about preventative maintenance and to me that means early and frequent changes.

Yes, I'm a retired commercial aircraft mechanic / Maintenance instructor. (Airbus, Boeing, Douglas etc.) You're correct, we're all about preventative maintenance, although some might be surprised, we NEVER change the oil on commercial turbine engines. (They all hold AT LEAST 25-30 quarts) Filters? Absolutely, as scheduled. However at low power settings, a small amount of oil is leaked and burned off, so we have to top it off, so you could almost say it changes itself.

Thank you to everyone for your input, I think I'll still do something early, but whether I'll do a complete change, or just spin on a clean filter, I'm not sure yet.

 

[Scarey]

The oil filter is not a great barrier, I forget the numbers, but I think the filter is not much finer then 20 microns. Yes machining debris is left behind, I believe the 6.2 recall notice specifically said debris was part of it. I forgot to mention the turbo charger using engine oil for lubrication and heat transfer, extreme rpms and temperature. At most, two extra oil changes a year at $75 ea. if that breaks the bank then I suggest you take the bus. Conversation over.

 

[Marky Dissod]

Yes, I'm a retired commercial aircraft mechanic / Maintenance instructor. (Airbus, Boeing, Douglas etc.) You're correct, we're all about preventative maintenance,
although some might be surprised, we NEVER change the oil on commercial turbine engines. (They all hold AT LEAST 25-30 quarts) Filters? Absolutely, as scheduled.
However at low power settings, a small amount of oil is leaked and burned off, so we have to top it off, so you could almost say it changes itself.

I've always believed that if one waits long enough to experience 0.5Qt of oil consumption, that oil change interval is too long.

Thank you to everyone for your input, I think I'll still do something early, but whether I'll do a complete change, or just spin on a clean filter, I'm not sure yet.

You're an aircraft mech; do y'all do used oil analysis? Bet that'd decide whether to do a complete oil change or just a new filter ...

 

[West 1]

We used to supply parts to a shop that built engines for Water Pumps used in farming. At the time these were all 454 powered rigs. The engines ran thousands of hours before they had failures and I believe they ran at 3,000 RPM constant. To keep them alive the engines were fed by a 50 GALLON oil drum. Not a 5 or 8 quart system. I don't remember what the cooling system was but I bet it was similar. They wanted never fail performance in these pumps because they worked remotely and were not checked on often.
When I was involved they had switched to Natural gas to fuel these engines and were having valve seat failures so some had come in for rebuild. Natural gas does not lubricate the valves and valve seats as well as gasoline so it wears the valve seats.
We had access to materials that lived in higher heat with less lubrication that solved the issue but funny thing I remember was the other customer buying the same material for valve seats was building engines for Top Fuel Dragsters, they exposed valve seats to extreme high heat also.

The amazing thing was how great these engines looked inside after working for thousands of hours. Constant throttle and load certainly helps. On off throttle wears engines because the amount of unburnt fuel goes up. But the 50 gallon supply of oil kept clean oil circulating and the internal parts showed near zero wear. This was several years ago and I don't remember what grade of oil was used or how often they switched the 50 gallon drum out for a new one but the engines had a constant supply of oil and never overheated.

This was back in the late 1990's, I bet today the water pumps would be powered by a 4 or 6 cylinder turbo diesel.

 

[Stbentoak]

The oil filter is not a great barrier, I forget the numbers, but I think the filter is not much finer then 20 microns. Yes machining debris is left behind, I believe the 6.2 recall notice specifically said debris was part of it. I forgot to mention the turbo charger using engine oil for lubrication and heat transfer, extreme rpms and temperature. At most, two extra oil changes a year at $75 ea. if that breaks the bank then I suggest you take the bus. Conversation over.

PF 66 filters are reasonably junk. I only use UPF 66R. Best bang for buck....

 

[steiny93]

two extra oil changes a year at $75 ea. if that breaks the bank then I suggest you take the bus. Conversation over.

so why not change it monthly, or weekly, or every other day?

it's nice that your opinion is the correct one

 

[jetfixer320]

I've always believed that if one waits long enough to experience 0.5Qt of oil consumption, that oil change interval is too long.

You're an aircraft mech; do y'all do used oil analysis? Bet that'd decide whether to do a complete oil change or just a new filter ...

Every Commercial turbine engine is different. Several years back I worked for a small airline where I saw the same plane every day. One brand of engine I used 2 cases of oil in 10 months, another I used nearly 50 in 5 months! (0.6 quarts per hour NORMAL) On one especially long day each week I'd feed it SIX quarts per engine every week, plus another 3-4 quarts for each oil cooled generator... Normal!

Yes, we did oil sampling, whenever headquarters told us to. We'd take the samples & send them away, but we never saw the results. We were "knuckle draggers." They trusted us to take the samples, but NEVER to interpret the results.