Right now I have 23xx miles on the SS/TC, and ~73% oil life remaining. If oil degradation/contamination is linear, this oil should last me to ~ 7500 miles.

While I trust that modern engines and oils can last that long (see mobil 5000, 10000, 15000 mile oils), should I be concerned about the filter?

What does the oil life sensor monitor? How dirty the oil is? If so, the life would correspond to how dirty the filter is. If it measures something else though, like some general lubrication property (of which contamination may only be one of several contributors), it's possible I could be running dirty oil for a while before I change it.

So what do you all do, do you change the filter as often as the oil? More often? Less often?

 

it corresponds to how many miles.. i change my oil and filter between 4-5k

if u wait til 7.5k-8k to change oil.. id change the filter at 4k

 

Change the filter when you change the oil.

BTW the oil life monitor isn't a "sensor", its all done mathematically. It is based on oil temps, RPM, cold starts as well as mileage. You could fill your engine with Pepsi and it will say 100% when you re-set it.

 

its all about mileage

 

Ha! Good to know.

 

.............u cannot change your filter on the car without changing the oil

 

^why not? (not saying ur wrong)

 

if u take the oil filter off it's gunna leak out alot of oil and u won't know exactly how much, so then your guessing how much oil to put back in........get it wrong and i'm sure the car will go BOOM........not in a good way

 

Sure you can.

 

You absolutely can change the filter on the new Ecotec engines without changing the oil, it's a cartridge in an upright housing. The question is why would you bother? I work at a GM dealership and I still change oil AND filter ~3000 with Royal Purple. Just makes good sense, you can't hurt your engine by doing it too early but you sure as **** can by not doing it often enough.

 

i was to lazy to write all that out, and i didn't know about the cartridge, my bad

 

dipstick? but yeah we have cartridge filters anyway.

 

dipstick is not as reliable as just draining the oil

 

You have a SS/TC and don't know the oil filter is a cartridge that you take out from the top?

 

i haven't even had my 1st oil change yet, only at 3000km so far and have never watched it get the oil changed.

 

i did my first oil change at 500 miles and second at 1500 and now i change my filter every 1000 and oil every 2000 but i think the main reason i change the filter so often is cause i get them for free

 

WTF are u talking about??? OMG

 

Your mistaken.
It take into acount engine tempature, driving habbits, time, and mileage. If you drive drive a lot of short trips(less than 10 miles), the oil breaks down quickly due to contamination(not getting up to tempature), and you will likely need to change it close to 3,000 miles. However if you are driving across the country/state often the oil doesn break down much, and you can easily get 7000 out of a single oil change.


For example..... Similar driving conditions just 55 degrees difference in outside tempature.
In my G6 I used to have, I would chane my oil about 7000 miles in the spring/summe per the oil system monitoring sytemr, however in the winter I would change it around 4,000 miles per the oil monitoring system.

And back on topic... I wouldn't change the oil filter early inless you are having a problem.(sludge in your engine, enginecleaners, etc) Most of us have a 100,000 mile warrenty.... GM must have some faith in the changing the oil/filter when the oil monitoring system say to change it.

 

Agreed!

But. there are plenty of people on this board that will say GM doesn't know anything and they know more - I can't wait to hear all the genius comments that will follow

 

I leased my 06 SC...so I changed it when the indicator said to. Now that i had to buy my TC Im going to make sure there is no issues by change it more often. Only issue i can see is dirt falling in when i change filters. Im always worried a chunk of dirts going to fall in when i unscrew the cover since its on top and you have to snake it around stuff to get it out.

 

Oil cartridge? Damn these Opel engines are wierd as hell. Now, I have heard about people putting in Royal Purple instead of mobile 1. Any difference?

 

Wow
Idk...i Just Change My Oil At 50% Then Pour Some Royal Purple In

 

new oil AND filter for me every 3k KILOMETERS yea u heard me not miles but KILOMETERS

 

Personally, I do the following:

Filter: Change every 3K miles
Oil: Change every 6K miles

It's cheap insurance IMO. My oil life is usually in the 30~40% range once I hit 6K miles. I figure with as hard as I push the car from time to time, it's an acceptable schedule.


Who am I kidding. I don't drive the car without hitting full boost at least once...

That's just overkill...

 

Dude, you probably buy new seats if you fart in them too!!!!