What Does a 10,000-Mile Oil Change Look Like?

What does a 10,000-mile oil change look like? There’s a lot of misinformation online, but we’re here to tell you 10,000 miles is not out of the question at all. And you don’t even need fancy oil to do it.

Below is a sampling of trends from my old Kia Optima—a vehicle that made it almost 270,000 miles before a fender bender at a red light totaled it (the engine was still going strong, but unfortunately the insurance company said it wasn’t worth more than a new bumper and a little paint).

Example A: A 2.4L Kia Optima running oil changes between 5,200 miles and 14,205 miles. Note that the metals in the 14,205-mile sample aren’t notably higher than in, say, the 6,300-mile sample. If you can get the same metals on 14,000 miles as you do on 6,000 miles… why not run 14,000-mile intervals?

Of course not everyone is a Kia fan, so let’s see how other makes and models do with longer oil change intervals. First, a sample from a 2018 Toyota Corolla having no problems with 20,000 miles on the oil.

10,000 miles? No problem.

How about something domestic? Here’s an F350 with 20,000 miles on the oil.

20,000 miles? Sure. Not every engine can do it, but a lot of them can.

If you’re sitting there thinking, 10,000, 20,000…but what about 30,000 miles? I got you. Behold: a Subaru Crosstrek with 32,000 miles on the oil. Aluminum and iron are both higher than they were previously, but this is just metal accumulation – not a sign of increasing wear. We know this because when we look at the amount of metal generated on a per-mile basis, the wear rates are still quite stable.

More metal is showing up, but it’s just accumulation, not a problem.

The “wear-rate view” showing wear metals produced per 1000 miles in the Subaru Crosstrek.

The wear-rate view is a way to compare oil changes on unequal intervals. In this engine’s case, we can see that aluminum is wearing at about the same rate as it was before, so the higher reading in the latest sample is just a function of aluminum just accumulating more on the longer oil change. Iron’s wear rate is a little higher than in past samples at 1.52 ppm/1,000 miles, but note that the average rate is 1.97 ppm/1,000 miles, so this engine’s steel parts are still wearing better than most.

Here’s another one: a Ford Focus doing well with oil changes up to 30,000 miles. The only reason this owner cut back to 16,000 miles for the latest sample was because he was concerned about a recent overheat and whether it had affected the engine. It hadn’t.

A Ford Focus wearing considerably better than average, considering it’s doing oil changes that are 3-4 times longer than average.

Don’t get us wrong. Not every engine does well with long oil changes. Engines that can run the longest are those that wear well in the first place. Other factors that impact how long you can run the oil include the amount and type of driving you do, how much weight you’re hauling around, any contaminants in the oil, and how much time you spend idling in traffic.

The only way to know for sure how your engine is doing with long oil runs (or even with short oil runs, for that matter) is to test the oil and see. If you tell us you’re interested in “extended oil use,” we’ll suggest a longer interval if we don’t see any problems. Maybe you too will find that your ideal oil change is somewhere on the other side of 10,000 miles!