I took my truck to the dealer I bought it from for it's first oil change at 3,000 miles. I had them switch over to synthetic( had a free synthetic oil change coupon I got negotiated into the purchase). And guess what these chumps did... Not only did they fail to reset the oil life monitor at the time of oil change(it hadn't come on yet because I wanted to change oil at 3,000 regardless of what the monitor said), because it came on like 50 miles after they changed the oil, but they also didn't screw on the oil filter tight enough, because a few hundred miles later, while my wife was driving the vehicle out of town and I was away on work, it started leaking oil from the seal on the filter. When my wife called and told me it was leaking oil, and that the stains on the concrete looked reddish brown, I figured a tranny leak and told her to take it to the closest dealer ASAP. When she brought it in they told her it was leaking from the oil filter because it was loose and wasn't tight enough. And as a result is was like 2 quarts low. Can you believe that? What kind

 

sorry, accidentally hit "post" on my phone prematurely....

What kind of technician at friggin dealership can't even do a proper oil change or know to reset the oil life monitor!?!? Imagine if we hadn't caught it and it lost alot of oil, before the low oil dummy light came on to warn us? I mean I check the oil probably once a week along with air pressure when I fill up with gas, but since I just got it changed at a dealer I wouldn't normally feel like I have to go double heck their work and make sure they put oil in it or that the filter is tight. How do I even know they even put synthetic in it? I'm ne'er going back there again! Makes me want to change my own oil, but I like having the oil changes documented in the computer system so no one can say I didn't follow the maintenance schedule if something catastrophic ever happens. Anyways, sorry for my rant, I was just blown away by the blatant incompetence.

 

use whichever your wallet allows, they will both work fine as long as they are changed regularly, the synthetic is supposed to last longer between changes, however i have no proof of this, i have personally been using dino oil (conventional) in all of my trucks (my fathter too) doing changes at the mfg recommended interval and we keep vehicles till at least 150k miles and never had a problem w/ the engines.

if you go synthetic there is no reason you cannot switch back to conventional, although if you want to stick w/ synthetic it is better to do it early since over time there will be build up on the seals ect in the engine and if you switch to synthetic later in the engines life you may create leaks since the better detergents will clean up the build up better.

 

As I understand it, the "Change Oil" indicator on the vehicle cannot be reset until it actually comes on. I had my first oil change performed by the dealer before it came on and the same thing happened to me. It was a simple reset, though, so it wasn't a big deal.

As for not tightening the oil filter...

 

I know it's easy enough to reset, I just thought they didnt do it cause they either didnt know how or didn't care to. Now that I know it must first be on in order to reset it...well now I feel dumb for bitching about that... thanks for the info

 

If so, then that's a lousy design. It ought to be able to reset to 0 whenever you do an oil change. It also ought to count down the miles.