Regular oil changes are a part of any truck owner’s life. This standard maintenance procedure helps ensure that your vehicle remains in good shape, with the engine running properly. Missing an oil change or two can cause problems down the road that you don’t want to deal with, and it really won’t save you that much money over the long term. However, if cost savings is important to you where oil changes are concerned, use the tips below to help you extend the interval between oil changes.
- Keep idle time to a minimum. Idling can introduce contaminants into the oil, resulting in the need to change it more frequently.
- Use a high quality oil filter that meets specifications from the engine manufacturer.
- Maintain optimum engine temperature to help keep the oil temp in check as well. Changing oil temperatures can result in changing viscosity, degrading the overall quality of the oil.
- Don’t let the oil pan run low. When the pan isn’t full, oil degradation speeds up, resulting in shorter times in between oil changes.
- Keep dirt ingestion into the engine to a minimum; this will ultimately contaminate the oil.
- Avoid oil additives – these can throw off the balance of the oil and affect performance.
- Make sure you’re using the right kind of oil for your engine. This seems like a no-brainer, but it still needs to be said; all too often, people make the mistake of choosing the wrong oil type, which can cause big problems later on.
Have an oil analysis performed, which will tell you about the quality of the oil and if any contaminants are present. Alerting you to these contaminants will let you know if there are any leaks or other issues present that can be negatively affecting your oil.