Good thread.

I have always had long oil change intervals.


I'm currently on 15k on semi 10-40 intervals. My car is primarily highway miles.

I used variety of Brands

Castrol Magnatec
Shell Helix
Total Quartz

Or what other flavours I can find from Tesco when on sale.


I'm doing 15k OIC on my 2009 Hyundai Matrix with 200k ++ KM. I do 50k a year on mostly highway. About 4K a month, so its a 3 month interval. Filter is original Kia/Hyundai/Mitsu

Yeah, 15K for me is fine. Given 90% of all the mileage is highway relaxed cruising.

But the discounted oils from Tesco are hard to come by nowadays. When they have it on sale, I usually buy a carton, unless they have a sale limit.


My old satria had 400k kms. Before a premature timing belt failure chewed up the valves. Not have time to rebuild the head myself yet. So i bought this matrix 2nd hand to pile on the miles.
Considering 2nd hand korean cars ALL have had their odometers tempered with (so no idea about the true mileage), my Matrix would be probably be about 300K now.

There are car guys and there are "car guys"

I am a car guy and an ex-performance engine builder and mechanic.

I detest short term oil changes. It is wasteful and harms the environment. Unless you drive a super high performance car or one with extremely tight engine tolerances, or one that sees infrequent use, frequent short interval changes are not necessary.

The biggest problem engine oil faces is condensation and moisture build up in the crankcase if the car is not driven enough. The other is particulates and carbon build up. Oil doesn't really wear out. It gets contaminated.


A real car guy will know when the engine needs fresh oil.



I used to do frequent oil changes on my turbo car running highboost, only because I get so much blowby on boost that the engine oil gets contaminated easily. Even then, its 5000km intervals for "frequent".

Off Topic. But the Matrix is very underrated and misunderstood car, mostly due to how it looks. FWIW, it was designed for the European market so it feels and drives like one of that era. It is underpowered though...which means you try to maintain momentum in the corners.

Handles very good for a car of that type. I will leave it at that.

This post has been edited by jaycee1: Dec 15 2017, 10:52 AM