Sort of on the subject... I have a habit of going to O'Reilly's to get my 3 Wix filters (one for each vehicle), but their oil is $26 a 5L jug, and the same oil is $17.xx at Walmart (please no anti-walmart, I know, rarely go there).

So a couple days ago I was at O'Reilly's doing my filter buying thing, guy says, "Don't want any oil"? I usually say "No", but that day I said, "Truthfully? Walmart as the same jug for $8 less." He said, "Oh, go get the jugs from the rack, I can make a good deal for you.". He charged me $17.85 for two jugs of regular Castrol, and $19.50 for the dark green Hi-Mileage Castrol. Yay, no more Walmart!

 

I have been told that time is sometimes a factor in addition to mileage. So if I didn't drive it very often I would still try and get it change twice a year, even though the mileage numbers were low. Basically same as public said

 

There is no sludge problem, that's just bs that gets fed to people by dumbasses who can't take care of their stuff. If you do the proper maintenance and take care of things you won't have issues.

 

This is true. Even if you don't drive very often, you still want to change the oil every few months, especially if you make a lot of short trips. My mom only drives her Golf a mile up the street to work everyday, but I still change the oil every 3-4 months.

 

the manual also states that that is for a very ideal usage, short trips, lots of sitting(moisture can and will get into the oil and if you dont drive it far it wont boil out), towing or lots of idling will reduce this, i did the experimenting on mine and had the oil analysis done at a number of change intervals as stated above for my driving 6500 was about where the oil was 'used up' (the tbn number was 1), i chose to do it at 5k miles because thats a nice easy number to remember and kept everything at nice consistent intervals. If you would like to discuss what i did i would be happy to share my experiences and more details, otherwise i wont bore you.

what oil sludge problem? are you one of those idiots that believes everything they read on the internet? there is no sludge problem w/ the 4.7, the only people who think that there is are the idiots that go 10k,15k maybe even 20k miles between changes (or even worse i have heard of people running the car until the low oil pressure light comes on and they have to add 5 qts of oil to a 6qt pan to bring the oil level back in range :O), and generally dont take care of their ****.