After owning American cars for most of my adult life, I decided to buy a Preowned 2004 325 i this year. My question is , How often do I change the oil? Im used to changing every 3000 miles, but this and other sites are spouting out number anywhere from 5000 to 7500 miles. Any help would be greatly appreciated !!
You can do every 3k with conventional motor oil, but if you use synthetic then you can go 5-7.5k without a problem. No more than 7.5k though in my opinion.
Agreed. 7500 miles with the synthetic seems to be the recommendation from most people (to include Mike Miller of Roundel's Tech Talk). Me being the anal owner that I am change mine at 5500 miles. Email Mike at 'techtalk@roundel.org' and ask him to email you his "BMW Old School Maintenance" Schedule/Article. It's an excellent resource to have on-hand. Cheers...
Honestly, I bet if you sent the oil for analysis, you would find you can go longer than 7500 miles. I believe in changing oil filters at half intervals since they are so easy to replace on most motors.
I would say the interval depends on the type of driving. All highway 7500 plus should be easy even for the BMW 5w-30. All in town with short trips 5000 miles is closer even with synthetic. My last 10 oil change analysis for my 2003 330 Ci can be found here: http://bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=1504489#Post1504489 Some OCIs with mostly highway and some with mostly short trips.
