Maintenance schedule

[GregW / Oregon]

Time owned: 5 1/2 months
Current mileage: 5,084
Miles untill next service: 11,000
Approx miles @ next service: 16,000
Driving style (mild / aggressive): 80/20
Driving split (highway / city): 40/60
Avg MPG to-date: 15.5

I will change my oil & filter at ~7,500 miles, as I did in my E46 M3.

[rvacha]

Greg has wisely added his average MPH, and that's key. Very early BMW conditional oil service calcualtions were rumored to be rather complex, but in later years BMW supposedly went with a simpler calculation based soley on MPG. The theory is that the lower your MPG, the harder you are driving your car and the sooner the oil will need to be changed. I might have the highest mileage M3 in the US so here's what my stats are:

Time owned: 6 months
Current mileage: 14,473
Miles untill next service: 1,700 (or 05/2010, whichever comes first)
Approx miles @ next service: 16,200 (my 1200 mile service was at exactly 1200 miles so this is very close to 15,000 miles since the break-in service)
Driving style (mild / aggressive): 80/20 (but much of it very fast!)
Driving split (highway / city / drifting): 80/19/1
Avg MPG to-date: 18.8
Avg MPH to date: 48.6

[BRDHNTR]

Time owned: 4 months
Current mileage: 5,286
Miles untill next service: 11,000
Driving style (mild / aggressive): 90/10
Driving split (highway / city): 70/30 (long trips on weekends and rural driving during the week)
Avg MPG to-date: 17.8

[sfbimmer13]

Originally Posted by GT3 Tim

and I know you have done some tracking, so it is interesting to see that you are still at about 15,000 for your next service.

update from today - after 1 day Laguna Seca

Current Mileage (odo): 6000
Mileage to next service (as indicated upon startup): 8000
Approx Mileage at next service: 14000
Driving style (mellow/aggressive): 50/50
Average MPG: 13.7

considering how hard a track day is on the engine and other components I am not going to wait until 14k miles...no way

BMW certainly knows what they are doing, however the CBS is not considering track stressed cars - this shows again that the CBS might be perfectly fine for 95-97% of M car owners...I actually can't believe how few of us here actually take their M3s to the track

[sfbimmer13]

Originally Posted by sfbimmer13

update from today - after 1 day Laguna Seca

Current Mileage (odo): 6000
Mileage to next service (as indicated upon startup): 8000
Approx Mileage at next service: 14000
Driving style (mellow/aggressive): 50/50
Average MPG: 13.7

considering how hard a track day is on the engine and other components I am not going to wait until 14k miles...no way

BMW certainly knows what they are doing, however the CBS is not considering track stressed cars - this shows again that the CBS might be perfectly fine for 95-97% of M car owners...I actually can't believe how few of us here actually take their M3s to the track

update: after 2 more track days and 6350 miles the milage to next service is now 7000, bringing down the milage to next service to roughly 13.500 miles

[ace996]

Originally Posted by uthatch

I can never figure out why someone would NOT believe that BMW knows what is best for the car that they designed, engineered, built, and has won critical acclaim over. They didn't miss a beat when it came to these elements, but don't know when the oil needs to be changed?

Not saying it's a bad idea to change the oil earlier, it just seems like a waste of time and money to me.

Before BMW started the 'free maintenance' the oil change interval was 7500 miles. Immediately after the new maintenance program, the interval went to 15000. Please try to imagine just how much money they save in materials and time by making it 15000 miles?

And lucky us...any problems from the 15000 mile intervals probably wont surface until after the warrantee period expires...oh joy, what fun that will be to replace VANOS or crank bearings on our own dime...

Do yourself and the next owner of your car a favor and drop the whole $100 in fluid/filter and change the oil like every other car...5-7K miles.

[lilcow]

Current Mileage (odo): 1367
Mileage to next service (as indicated upon startup): -200 (due for 1200-mile)
Approx Mileage at next service: 16600
Driving style (mellow/aggressive): 95/05
Average MPG: 21.0

[Simma]

bump

[fongpi]

Originally Posted by ace996

Before BMW started the 'free maintenance' the oil change interval was 7500 miles. Immediately after the new maintenance program, the interval went to 15000. Please try to imagine just how much money they save in materials and time by making it 15000 miles?

And lucky us...any problems from the 15000 mile intervals probably wont surface until after the warrantee period expires...oh joy, what fun that will be to replace VANOS or crank bearings on our own dime...

Do yourself and the next owner of your car a favor and drop the whole $100 in fluid/filter and change the oil like every other car...5-7K miles.

You have an interesting point with regard to cost savings, but why would BMW compromise their reputation over something as small as three or four oil changes per car sold? It just doesn't make any sense.