bazza123:
Freightdog: what procedures do you have for your jet engines? When I’ve been on an aircraft they seem to start up just before the push back and are switched off very quickly after arrival at the gate. Do you rely on the thousands of litres a minute of air sucked in to act as cooling for certain components?
Re cars I was the subject of much hilarity by someone I know recently when I had the cheek to suggest they might want to get their car’s oil changed after the first few hundred miles (brand new VW diesel…). Apparently there was no need for this and the first service was at 10k! You have to wonder where all the swarf etc from the machining etc etc was going. To be fair they are on a three year agreement and never “buy” a car so couldn’t care less. If it was me I would be minded to change the oil early on.
There shouldn’t be “machining swarf” in a new engine nowadays, and you’d expect the oil and the filter to be capable of removing anything undesirable. Engines are flushed, started, and tested at the factory, before they are even put into a vehicle.
As far as I know, an early oil change for a new engine has only ever been recommended because it’s recognised that the oil will be loaded with residues more quickly during the early part of its life, but both engine and oil technology has probably reached the point where the oil is fine for 10k miles.
Given the complexity of an engine and the cost of servicing it or replacing it, no sane manufacturer wants to give advice (or embark on a policy) that unnecessarily reduces the lifetime of its engines beneath that of the car as a whole. If anything, they want the whole thing to degrade and for the car to slowly die of a thousand minor cuts until the consumer decides to get rid of it, not for something as totemic as the engine to go, which forces the consumer to get rid of (or splash a huge lump of cash all at once on) what might otherwise seem a serviceable and valuable vehicle.
If you are in a conspiratorial mood, they have every bit as much incentive to recommend more frequent oil changes than necessary, so that their dealer networks rake income in (which, even if not going directly to the manufacturer, encourages their dealers to sell cars at a lower up-front markup and shift more of them), they get the chance to look things over more regularly and catch failing parts before they become major and expensive to fix, and to give them an excuse to void or dispute warranties when customers don’t engage in regular servicing.
I aim to keep my cars as long as possible. My dad had a Nissan Sunny in the mid 90’s. When it went to scrap it never missed a beat, started straight away even then and never burnt a drop of oil. Only died due to excessive corrosion. My BMW used to drink the stuff and I believe their bikes do too.
In other words, the engine had been over-maintained relative to the life of the vehicle as a whole! 
. I’ll stick with my manual.
transmissions apparently never needing an oil change, all designed to keep leasing fleet costs down, with the worse offenders sticking rigidly to their measly 3 year warranties, you don’t hear of Toyota or Honda or Kia/Hyundai recommending 20k service intervals or suggesting the gear oil should never be inspected or changed.
