Quote:
Originally Posted by terrapen73
It is all based on how the car is driven. Track days and hard loads on the engine are going to make the computer take off a lot more miles than normal highway driving. I drive about 9000 miles per year and did not track my present car so I got the yearly free oil change plus the one I did myself at 5k or 6 months whichever happened first. I never reset my sensor on those oil changes and it just kept counting slowly down from 15000. Usually had around 4-5000 remaining before it was due when the year came up.
On my previous 2002 M Coupe it was a whole different story. It would literally be at 15000 and drop to 12750 or 13000 over a hard weekend, even though I only went a couple hundred miles, albeit some were "track" miles. That is the computer deciding the car was driven hard and thus you won't get the same life from the oil. Earlier in this thread M3 Adjuster said he was losing 3k a shot at track events. He may wind up with 4 or 5 oil changes a year on BMW because the computer is calling for it. He may have only driven 10k in that whole time but due to the heavy loads on the engine, it is calling for more frequent service, which BMW always honored for me on my M car.
Multiple components on the car work the same way. Most current owner's manuals don't list this, but on older cars they had heavy load or what was called city driving intervals along with normal intervals. The transmission fluid and air filter replacement dropped from 30k to 15k if you used the car in those conditions. Same thing for oil changes.
Edit: As one more thing to keep in mind, it may call for your Service 1 and Service 2 sooner than 30k and 60k miles for the exact same reason. On my M Coupe it called for Service 1 at 22k. My present Z4 coupe it didn't call for Service 1 until 31k.
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Exactly what I was looking for.. Thanks for the very informative reply. .. ..
If how the car is driven dictates the oil changes and BMW is picking up the tab, that is absolutely awesome. My car is a weekend car. I can't daily drive it... I'll lose my license!
My next oil change range is now down to 900 miles.. with around 3700 on the odo... Gonna beat you Franklin! LOL..