Can I drive without changing my engine oil for an extended period?

Question

Is it possible to continue driving my Honda Civic without changing the engine oil for an extended period, and how does this affect engine performance, potential damage to the engine, or overall efficiency? Is it truly necessary to change the oil at recommended intervals, and what is the ideal time to change the engine oil?

Answer 1

Can you? Sure. You can drive it for however long you want to. Your car. Do as you please.

Should you? If you want your car to last, nope. The engine is probably the most expensive mechanical part of the vehicle. Engine oil affects the engine directly. With out oil changes, sludge buildup occurs. This restricts oil flow and parts get extra wear. The sludge buildup also creates hot spots in the engine, which can affect wear. Typically, oil does several jobs besides lubricates. One of them is to cool the engine (take heat away from hot spots). If the oil can't get to the spot because of sludge, that's what I'm talking about.

The oil itself wears out and will no longer provide all of the protection the engine needs, so from that you get increased wear. The "protection" I'm talking about is cleaning, corrosion resistance, etc. I wrote another answer which covers a lot of this stuff.

As far as When should I change the oil? ... most modern vehicles have an oil life indicator. You cannot go wrong following its guidance. The oil life indicator takes into account not only the mileage put on the oil, but also how much strain is put on the engine, run time, and a few other factors. The computer takes all of this into account and will tell you when it believes the oil is done. While the old school thinking of "change your oil every 3k miles" is a thing of the past, the oil life indicator works pretty well. Enough engineering went into the programming of it to work pretty well.

Why I state all of this is there is no ideal time to change the oil which is standard across the industry. You need to follow your oil life meter or if your vehicle doesn't have one, you should follow your manufacturer's guidance.

Bottom line, again to answer the Is it truly necessary to change the oil? question ... it's your car; it's your money. You can pay a little now and change the oil, or you can pay a lot later and replace the car earlier and more often then you would otherwise. Boils down to your choice and your pocketbook.