Oil Change every 15k miles?

[mikefocke]

Read the definition of "severe service" in the manual.

If you are doing all highway driving at moderate temperatures, you use the higher change interval (though some of the 15k intervals that got published soon got changed to 10k).

But most of us drive in the cold, the heat, in traffic, in dusty conditions, with the a/c adding heat, for short trips, etc. And those call for cutting the interval in half.

I always did 5k or 1 year for my 986s with the M96.

I always believed the extended change intervals were marketing driven making the maintenance costs look good in magazine reviews long term reliability be darned.

Just as I still believe in 1k for the first change on a new or rebuilt engine.

Oil is cheap, engines aren't.

Yes, you can always get an oil analysis and see how your oil with your kind of driving is holding up.

[hancock1701]

I was changing my oil at 5000 miles or every 6 months, but I forgot one time and let the oil go up to 9000 miles. Had the 9000 mile oil tested by Blackstone and all the characteristics were still good. Oil was Mobil1 0W40 and car is at 137,000 miles now.

[Giller]

Personal opinion - change it lots. An extra oil change or two is far far cheaper than a new motor. 15K is silly - as someone pointed out - most manufacturers are now revising that to 10k. Even that seems high, especially on a high-performance, OLDER motor such as what we have.
Treat it well. Give it a fresh shot of oil to keep her clean as often as possible.

[mnc-i]

The funny thing is that no where in my owner's manual or Warranty & Customer Information manual is any kind of maintenance discussed. Kind of weird isn't it.

I had to discover the oil & filter change intervals from my Bentley Service Manual after I about fell down when the mechanic at my local Porsche dealership started telling me that the Boxster was one of the least maintenance intensive vehicles Porsche produces (e.g. oil changes at 15,000 miles, oil & filter changes every 30,000 miles, etc.).

So I checked the Bentley manual and Porsche Boxster (986) FAQ (this was in 2009, so the link may not still be active) and both confirmed what the mechanic was stating.

My 1999 Boxster has over 233,000 miles and I change the oil & filter every 10,000 miles.

You cannot beat that good old German engineering:-)

It would be nice if Porsche had installed an oil useful life sensor like Chevorlet started doing back in 1997 on the Corvette (it provides a estimate of how much useful life your oil has based on a whole lot of parameters such as miles driven, total rpms and operating cycles since the last oil change). That is American engineering!

[Pdwight]

I only drive my S about 2 to 4 K miles a year...change it every spring.....Oil is cheaper than engine parts

[clickman]

Originally Posted by Pdwight

I only drive my S about 2 to 4 K miles a year...change it every spring.....Oil is cheaper than engine parts

If you put it to bed for the winter, you should change the oil before. Don't have the nasties sitting on your precious engine parts all winter.