Holy cow! every 3500 with syn? That would be overkill for an aircooled gasser, let alone a diesel with a 3 gal capacity. I've heard it all now.If your really that paranoid just change the filter every 5000. You could save 1000's of $ dollars over the life of the truck simply by following the guidelines set down by the engineers that built the engine. We change the farm equip. once a yr( some of the stuff is 40 + years old). Can you save your old oil for me? I'll get at least another 10,000 more miles out of it in the truck and then I could run it in an old tractor.

 

I plan on sticking with the Cummins schedule and doing it every 7500.

 

You guys bring up some good points. My truck for the most part doesn't see anything close to severe duty so I'll compromise and change it at about 10 - 12k. I do drive on a lot of dusty roads.

 

I do mostly highway and/or towing every 2-4 week thru the summer. In the winter I'm in Flordia and again mostly highway. On my 04.5 I changed every 10-12000 miles and at 70K miles never had a problem other than the black oil that they all do after 5 seconds of driving. On my new 07 5.9 I plan on first oil change at 5000 then 10-12K mile intervals after that using Mobil or Delo oil. No synthetics and really don't like the smell of Shell Rotella. Fuel filters at 10K and will first change differentals at 10K then maybe 45K intervals after that. Tranny at 30K intervals religiously and transfer case at 30K and not sure after that on t-case. T-case dosen't get much use now that we are in warm weather during winter months.

As above if it is good enough for Cummins to recomend it than it's good enough for me to use it.

 

Don, how do you like the 07 vs. the 04.5? I'm kinda wishing that I had traded to an 07 but the 04.5 has been so perfect I was hesitant to mess with a good thing.
Joe

 

My manual says every 15k, I have 14 free oil changes so I did my first at 5k, my second at 12.5k, now I'll do it every 6 months, that'll cover 7yrs of oil changes.

 

I do 5,000 mile Rotella T/Stratapore oil changes and 10,000 mile fuel filter changes. Easy to remember. Ed B

 

You Copycat!

 

Why do "dusty conditions" require more frequent oil changes? Is there really that much dust getting through the air filter and on into the oil? So much that is must be sent out with the oil? Wow. How can engines live so long with all that grit?

Wetspirit

 

hmm good point. I dont know either. Maybe the engine has to work harder from less air getting in. If you read their severe versus normal criteria its a good laugh. Unless you live where the temperature is between about 40 and 80 constantly and just putt putt to the grocery store on calm days with no wind blowing dirt then you pretty much fall in the SEVERE catergory, according to dodge

 

Every 5000 miles. Oil and FF.

 

i DROVE TOW TRUCK FOR YEARS AND WE CHANGED THE OIL EVERY 10,000 KLM EVERY TIME RIGHT ON THE DOT! AND THERE WAS NEVER a problem, even our 1992 Ram with 950,000 klm's on it was still high on compression and never broke down, never burnt oil, and is still running to this day at over 1.3 million! Every 10 is fine, I do my 2001 every 10K