For some, an oil change is like heading to the dentist: inconvenient but necessary.
Today’s newer-tech engines using synthetic oil are engineered to go anywhere from 7,500 to 15,000 miles between oil changes. Thanks to more exacting standards in engine-building technology, the quality of the synthetic oils has improved. And there’s another factor: more than half of today’s new cars have monitoring systems that give you a heads-up when it’s time to change the oil.
Your driving style and needs can also affect how often you need to change your oil. If you just drive around town and put 6,000 miles or so on the odometer every six months, you might change the oil twice a year. If you do a lot of highway or long-distance running or operate your vehicle in sandy or dusty surroundings like the deserts of Nevada or Arizona, you might be a candidate for more frequent changes.
Once upon a time, local service stations and Quick-Lube franchisees recommended changing traditional oil and oil filters every 3,000 miles. That was mostly a marketing ploy. Lately, with the use of synthetic blends and full synthetic oils, owners are now able to push out or extend the vehicle’s oil life further to 10,000 miles or even as much as 15,000 miles.
Regular maintenance won’t just keep your car running well, it’ll help protect your car’s value over time. For more ways to do this, see How to Maintain the Value of Your Car.
Let's start with the basic question: why should you EVER change your oil? The answer is because the oil is there to protect your engine's moving parts from heat and friction. It has lubricating and cooling functions, and does this job less well over time and stress. So, when is it "time" to change the oil? When the oil approaches being no longer
able to do that job effectively. Note that this is about the QUALITY and not QUANTITY of oil; if your engine burns oil, or leaks it, you may have to add more oil before the oil needs changing, or you may get out just about exactly the same volume of oil out of your engine as you last put into it when you change it. Doesn't factor into this discussion. The "maintenance minder" in modern cars - the 2022 Civic in particular - is not just some kind of timer based on miles driven in combo
with time elapsed since the last oil change. It is based on exactly how you used your car, and in what conditions.
This is a good thing, because the whole "service schedule" thing in the owner's manual in the past was based on miles driven and/or number of months since the last change - "6 months/5,000 miles" or for "severe conditions", "after 3 months/3,000 miles". Time/mileage based oil change schedules were never a good idea; only the best possible guideline given the lack of monitoring technology. Those guidelines could not possibly know HOW you drove your car. And by describing "severe conditions" as needing more frequent maintenance with vague terms like "frequent stop and go trips" or "dusty or dirty conditions", almost everyone could say "yeah that sounds like me, better not risk it" and end up getting too-frequent oil changes.
So what, you may ask? Why not just go with the absolutely most conservative (frequent) "schedule" for changing oil, to avoid any possible problems with using oil past its optimal performance?
For an extreme example, NASCAR racers change the oil in their car engines multiple times per event. Why not do the same, other than cost (money)? Because you're not driving at those speeds and conditions for as long a time on public roads (I sure hope not)! And oil and filters are fairly cheap, it only takes like 15-30 minutes to do yourself, so, why not just do it every three months?
But there is indeed a downside to changing your oil unnecessarily in addition to the cost of oil/filters: a fairly high environmental cost. There's a reason you can't (shouldn't) just dump your old oil into the trash, it has to be properly disposed of - treated and recycled and all that. Because it's a contaminant, a pollutant. If that stuff gets into ground water, it's poison.
The maintenance minder on the computer constantly takes into account the RPM you drive at, and how long you held that RPM, the engine temperature at the time, etc., to do a CONSERVATIVE estimate on the "life remaining" on your oil. When it gets to 15% you should change it as soon as reasonably possible, but that doesn't mean getting to 0% is going to make your engine break down; just like the "fuel empty" light on your dash, "0% engine life" means you still have probably 15% "for real" before any significant ill effect would be seen.
There is no good effect to changing your oil at 3,000 or 5,000 miles "just to feel like I'm treating the car well" if the minder says you have way more than 15% life left. (Sure, if it's down to like 25% and you're about to go on a long trip, go for it.) You're only adding more waste oil to the world that you could have held back on.
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Oh, one more thing: "they" used to say you should change the oil at least once a year because oil that just sits in the crankcase of a parked car will quietly degrade, so that year-plus old oil was fundamentally untrustworthy. I think, THINK, that this is far less true with modern synthetic oils, and that the "maintenance minder" does incorporate time elapsed (in the crankcase) as well in its formula.
But that's the exception I would make myself to the "follow the maintenance minder" thing - if I hadn't driven the car very much and it'd been 18+ months the last time I changed the oil, despite it only having been driven 2 or 3 thousand miles or something if the minder said it was still at 90% life. But if I noticed the minder percentage dropping despite such little usage, indicating it was factoring in time spent parked in the degradation formula, I'd trust it unless I'd filled it last time with some crappy oil I didn't really trust the quality of.