I am by far no expert on this but my belief is that even if
you only put 1000 miles a year on a vehicle that you should change the oil and
filter annually because this generally implies to me that the car is getting
short runs where most of it is warm up and that generates the most wash down to
the oil and also does not promote burning out the moisture. For the same
reason I would also change the fuel filters and also put in a fuel stabilizer
like Stabile
Synthetic or not, I think that people who make lots of short
trips should change more frequently than cars that rack up lots of speed limit road
miles. My wife drives 80 miles RT to work each day at mostly the speed limit
so I let her car go a little longer than what I drive locally.
I do not put many miles a year on my ’55 Dodge but the
oil gets changed in the spring and fall.
For equipment that I use around the “farm”, I
change the oil before putting it away for the winter and also make sure the gas
is run out of the carb.
As previously indicated, I was on a Mercedes chat list for 6
years and the master guru mechanic for MB USA car owners association, who used
to run a repair facility for those cars, changes his oil every 2500 miles regardless.
While he knows it is probably an over kill, his thinking is that it is cheaper
than replacing hard parts.
Tom Taylor