Why does everyone trust the factory maintenance schedule?

2 comments

2 Comments

My Subaru's manual says 6k oil changes but the dealer pushed me to 10k. At 45k miles I started getting lifter noise, switched back to 6k and it cleared up. That mechanic guy is 100% right, the book numbers are just to get you through the warranty.

nathan1931mo ago

Saw a post last week from a mechanic with 20+ years in the shop saying the factory schedules are basically the "idiot proof" minimum, not what your car actually needs. He said they're designed to get the car past the warranty period, not to keep it running for 200k miles. Plus a lot of the intervals are set for "normal" driving conditions, but most people are in stop and go traffic or extreme weather, which is technically "severe" use in the manual. So you could do oil changes every 10k miles like the book says, but if your commute is short trips, that oil is getting dirty way faster than the test cars. It's not that the factory is lying, it's just that they're covering the average case and most of us aren't average.