GM oil life

[royg]

How does the oil life system work? What factors does it use to determine when to say CHANGE ENGINE OIL?

[C & A s Dad]

I am no expert on this but it is my understanding is that it uses your driving habits, RPMs, Miles driven, temp etc to calculate when to change. It is a decent system but it is not acutally reading oil condition to determine when to change. I have a Brother in Law with almost 300K on a 2000 6.0L and he has always changed his oil according to the monitor and cannot tell you how many miles it has on it when he changes it.

 

Personaly, I do not use mine but use the tried and true method or time and/or miles.

[vxaxv17]

I am no expert on this but it is my understanding is that it uses your driving habits, RPMs, Miles driven, temp etc to calculate when to change. It is a decent system but it is not acutally reading oil condition to determine when to change. I have a Brother in Law with almost 300K on a 2000 6.0L and he has always changed his oil according to the monitor and cannot tell you how many miles it has on it when he changes it.

 

Personaly, I do not use mine but use the tried and true method or time and/or miles.

 

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

 

 

I generally use the light indicator to know when to change my oil and it usually comes on somewhere between 3k and 5k miles after being reset. I have always used the same regular oil though.

 

A friend of mine has an 05 Canyon and he uses the synthetic mobile 1 which is good for 15k miles. He has changed his oil twice now at 10k miles each and the light indicating a change is necessary still had not come on both times. Actually, he has yet to see it ever light up. This could indicate:

 

1. The system is not working properly

2. The system actually does know whether or not the oil is still "good".

 

I really have no idea how it could know what type of oil you used or if the oil is still functional but it would seem that way. Has anyone else noticed this as well?

 

Jim

[TonyMazz]

The OLM uses engine revolutions, oil temperature, fuel delivery, engine load, engine speed.

 

There has been extensive research done by GM (i.e. Dr. Shirley Schwartz) back in the 80's to build the OLM. The OLM is tailored to each engine and driving habits, and while it does not actually look at the oil, it does constantly read the drive cycle parameters as you drive the vehicle.

 

The revolutions has a starting point and as you drive the current drive cycle revolutions are subtracted from the base point. While the engine is cool or in warm up, (i.e. more contaminates in oil are possible like water, or unburned fuel) there is a penalty factor applied which further subtracts at a faster rate from the base starting number.

 

It does not matter how many miles you drive, except as a safety factor that it will never let you exceed a pre-set amount based on engine type.

 

The tests done with the OLM were conducted using conventional "good" dino oil and the model doesn't care about synthetic or blended, or dino oil....

 

We often try to guess when we should change our oil, and this computer / sensor driven system, constantly reads inputs from sensors on motor while examining the above parameters....and when a threshold is reached then the change engine oil is tripped.

 

Is it perfect, no (i.e. doesn't know if you use a good oil or bad, nor does it know dusty conditions or not). But keep it

s pretty good....

[gmcjoe]

http://www.thegmcard.ca/media/gminnovation...itor_en_CA.html