When to change oil in the car?

“Alot of cars these days have a oil life % display on their dash. My question is should you change the oil when the car idicates to change it or should you do it routinely at 3000 miles. I always wondered how reliable the onboard oil monitor sysem is. God Bless!”

Well, I’m a dinosaur man myself and change the oil every three thousand miles, but my cars are all OLDER than dirt. On the modern high end cars, those oil percentage displays use a whole combination of driving sensor feedback to the computer and graphs to come to a time when the computer feels is right for the oil change. Theoretically these figures are quite accurate–WHEN they work correctly. I’ve seen too many of them personally that had broken down and never gave a time to change the oil. So I’d stick to the old standbye three thousand mile figure as a general rule myself (unless you’re using synthetic oil which can go eight thousand miles or more.)