Oil changes

For those of you who only drive your classics "every once in a while":

How often do you change your oil?

Spring and fall.

That's about my schedule too. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't crazy.

Just before I put the car away for winter, usually the end of October or so. Bring it out about mid April.

I drive mine so little, once a year.

Annually when the car comes out of storage in the spring. I might put 3000kms per year on the car these days...

Running HDEO (5w40 Rotella T6 works well in damn near anything), once every spring should be just fine. Silly to change it in fall, either to just change it again in spring or use it in spring. If the oil wasn't totally junked by fall, it isn't going to hurt anything to sit in storage all winter. If it isn't in climate controlled storage it will pick up water.

Once a year for me as well. I don't put enough miles on it to warrant changing it more frequently.

Kenny_McCormic wrote: Running HDEO (5w40 Rotella T6 works well in damn near anything), once every spring should be just fine. Silly to change it in fall, either to just change it again in spring or use it in spring. If the oil wasn't totally junked by fall, it isn't going to hurt anything to sit in storage all winter. If it isn't in climate controlled storage it will pick up water.

I was thinking of going on an "annual schedule". I hardly drive it at all between October and March (roughly when I change the oil) and even then I MIGHT drive it to work (17-miles one way) once a week.

In reply to Kenny_McCormic: no worries about water condensation in my dry storage... It's too damn cold!!

In reply to ggarrard:

Spring and fall are when it will pick up water, when the humidity is high and the low temperature at night around freezing.

In reply to Hungary Bill:

Yeah, HDEO and change every spring should work fine for that. Just try to get a 20+ minute highway run in occasionally to keep the fuel dilution and moisture levels down. You can run analysis to verify, P/N FIL 4077 at NAPA for $14, that's a prepaid kit, just fill it up right from the drain stream when you change it, fill out the form and ship it in to the address on the can. You'll get the results faster (priority processing) if you ship the whole thing in a box with tracking on it.

Good call. I've honestly never had my oil analyzed before. Should be interesting to see what shows up in a 50-year-old block

That cheap NAPA kit gets you TBN(how much PH buffer is remaining) too, that's the number you're most concerned about in an application like this.

Plus one for oil analysis. Besides oil breakdown can aid in spotting bearing, piston, cam wear etc. from metals suspended and compared to like engines w/ similar mileage as yours can spot premature wear. Invaluable for keeping an early eye out for leaking intake gaskets on the GM V6 too.

Been using Blackstone, more pricey than Napa but I been satisfied.

In reply to fasted58:

You have to pay extra for the TBN test going through Blackstone IIRC, the only thing the NAPA/WIX test is missing is insolubles, which is of minimal concern unless it's a diesel.