How Should Your Vehicle's Age Affect Your Oil Change Schedule?

Routinely changing the oil is the bare minimum to keep any car healthy and running efficiently. All vehicles require lubrication to prevent excessive wear and, in extreme cases, potentially catastrophic damage. However, oil inevitably breaks down and becomes contaminated over time, reducing its lubricating properties. Once this breakdown becomes severe enough, it's time for an oil change.

Automotive manufacturers create oil change maintenance schedules that balance cost, convenience, and vehicle reliability. These extended service intervals may work well for relatively new cars, but what about when your car is a little older? Understanding how age and mileage affect your oil change schedule can help you make better-informed decisions once your warranty is a distant memory. 

How Age Affects Your Engine

Your oil keeps your engine lubricated, reducing friction and heat, but there's no such thing as a frictionless mechanical device. Your engine's internal components will inevitably experience wear, even if you follow a religious oil change schedule. This wear produces tiny metal flakes, often appearing in oil analyses performed on older engines.

There's no way to stop this wear from occurring, but it's important to recognize that it's happening. As your vehicle ages, your oil filter will need to work harder to keep the oil clean, and your oil will inevitably become contaminated more quickly. Contaminated oil lubricates less effectively, accelerating this wear process and potentially causing even worse problems.

How to Minimize Your Car's Engine Wear

While all engines will eventually wear down, one way you can potentially help to slow this process is by adjusting your oil change schedule to account for the increased wear on your engine. A good place to start is with your manufacturer's recommended "severe" oil change schedule. A severe maintenance schedule typically provides accelerated maintenance intervals for vehicles operating in harsh conditions.

Switching to more frequent oil changes means you'll remove your contaminated oil filters more often and swap out your oil before it can break down too much. As a result, you'll ensure that your oil remains about as clean as it did when your engine had fewer miles on the engine. Cleaner oil lubricates better, helping to prevent accelerating engine wear.

You may also want to consider using an oil formulated for high-mileage vehicles. These oils usually contain special additives to help keep your engine's internal seals lubricated and to break up any sludge accumulation. While high mileage oil isn't a "liquid cure," it can help minimize internal wear and keep your engine running for longer.

Ultimately, the most important thing you can do for any high-mileage vehicle is to stay on top of your routine oil changes. High-mileage formulations and more frequent changes will help, but it's crucial never to allow your oil changes to go longer than your manufacturer's minimum recommendations.