The owner's manual says the car will alert me to when an oil change is needed. Now that I've passed 3,000 miles, my husband suggests I get an oil change anyway, even if I haven't been signaled to by the car.

What do you all think?

Mine is an automatic with dual clutch transmission; I do both city and freeway driving.

I tend to go along with your husband. Oil, even synthetic is cheap. Little 1.4 liter works hard, and revs high. Treat her to fresh 5W/40 synthetic oil and Fiat filter, and have dealer reset the oil change indicator if necessary. I would change again at around 9-10k max. Then engine should be fully broken in to go by oil change indicator.

Idonwanna said:

The owner's manual says the car will alert me to when an oil change is needed. Now that I've passed 3,000 miles, my husband suggests I get an oil change anyway, even if I haven't been signaled to by the car.

What do you all think?

Mine is an automatic with dual clutch transmission; I do both city and freeway driving.

Click to expand...

It certainly won't do any harm to change the oil and filter much sooner than required but I would argue the benefits of doing so will only really come into play if you intend to keep the vehicle for a very long time. If you intend to get rid of the vehicle say after three years I would say it's an uneeded expense. You will probably prolong the life of the engine but if you are not keeping the car you are unlikely to benefit from it, the subsequent owners are.

I suppose it's possible you may slightly increase the re sale/part ex. price by doing so so keep any receipts for the changes.

As others have said, you can't break a car by giving it too many oil changes.
It's your money. It's your car.

I've been running Fiats/Alfas for the last 15 years.

Most people seem to follow the service schedule and then do an intermediate
oil and filter change between these.


DERVs with DPFs need to be watched. If you have a failed DPF regen then
it's possible you'll get fuel in the sump on some Fiat DERVs so an oil/filter
change at that point would be a good idea.

Be warned that when you have the oild changed you MUST have the oil degration index reset at the same time. Failing to do this will result in potential costly DPF issues further down the line!

The last time I knew about anyone doing 3000mile oil changes was on old Range Rover V8s with such poor engine tolerances you needed crude oil in the sump just to keep some sort of seal at the piston rings.

No modern engine will benefit anymore from a 3000mile oil change than it will from a 10k oil change

5k /6k i can understand changes

But 3k is a little premature

As said before - Modern diesels not require a full reset after changes to prevent issues with oil degraded warnings coming up even if its fresh

The car needs to know when it done

Ziggy

is it in your handbook oil change set to be on 5000miles(3000m)?
that is around 8050kilometers and in handbook which I got with my 500L says oil change 20,000km (~12400miles) or 1 year, what first come.

only if car has trailer all the time or is used in to dusty area, should change oil earlier but again with consult dealership.

for past 2 years i got 2 oil change(with all filters)

OFC nothing cannot be wrong if change oil earlier but it is waste of money , specially with this new oils

Thank you everyone for your input! I'll do it somewhere between 4500 and 5000 for the first.

In the old days you'd get a lot more metal particles in the oil when you bedded-in a brand new engine. It made sense to carry out an early oil change to get them out of there.

These days the oil is much better and the manufacturing tolerances are a lot finer, so the particles aren't so severe. I'd still change the oil early but it's not "essential", especially if you're not going to run the car forever.

Having said that, most cars get sent to Boot Hill because something breaks, rather than something wears out. One extra oil change in the car's life is less important than continually looking after it as it ages...


Ralf S.

... Especially those Twinnies, eh Ralf?