Don’t Ignore Your Oil Change Sticker

When is the last time you had your oil changed? When is the last time you checked your oil change sticker to see if you were due up?

Changing your oil is the first line of defense for your motor. Too many companies are pushing longer and longer oil change intervals, and we’re here to tell you the truth: You should never go more than 3,000 miles on an oil change in a gas motor, or 5-8,000 in a diesel (depending on how the truck is driven).

Engine oil is what lubricates your motor so that all the moving parts continue moving, when the oil gets dirty it no longer does a good job of lubricating. On top of that, newer engines have very very small oil passages to move the oil to different parts of the engine, those oil passages can become clogged if the oil moving through them is full of particles, meaning you can be starving parts of your engine for oil.

What makes oil dirty? Well, there are a few things, metal particles from your engine, dirt from the environment, and the biggest one, filth from the fuel you use. Metal from your engine is unavoidable, but regular oil changes can help lessen that. Dirt from the environment can be lessened by making sure you keep your air filters changed, and again, changing your oil regularly.

The biggest contributor to dirty oil is fuel. when the gas gets burned in your engine the dirt and particles get left behind and end up in your oil. Gasoline used to be a lot cleaner, if you found a car in a barn that had been there for a couple of decades you would be able to fire it up with the gas in the tank with no issues. Gas today is not like the gas of yesteryear. It’s full of ethanol, which attracts water, and water is dirty. On top of that, gas stations do not clean their tanks nearly enough.

So, if you want to get the most life out of your vehicle we recommend only getting gas at higher end gas stations, Hucks, Fivestar, and BP is usually who we use in our area, or if there’s a gas station near you that was built recently, their tanks are new, so they’re usually clean; and get your oil changed at regular intervals.

While we recognize that changing your oil is not the most difficult thing and a lot of people prefer to do it themselves, Peck’s Customs recommends getting your oil changed by a trustworthy mechanic that will also do an inspection of your vehicle. We save a lot of customers a lot of money by finding problems when they are small during oil change inspections as opposed to waiting for the problem to worsen to the point that they notice it.