Is anybody still doing a 10-15K oil change?

As much as I am not a fan of they're other products I use the Lucas grease, it has the best anti-sling of any grease I have tried. It does not last long as a fifth wheel grease tho, I use a Valvoline grease there that seems to last.

 

Guess it is the old farmer in me that causes me to grease more frequently. Now, to be sure, not everything under there gets grease each and every time. I will only hit the clutch and tranny every other time, and the slack adjusters only get grease at oil change intervals But suspension, brake cam shafts, tie rods, and drive lines get grease every 5000 miles. I don't pump in so much that it is flowing out everywhere. I usually just pump till it is starting to seep out or base it on a certain number of pumps. As for this being really close intervals, think of those automatic greasing systems available for commercial trucks. They grease at regular intervals a lot sooner than I do. To be sure, they don't inject much grease each time. It is the same philosophy I have.... more frequent intervals but using smaller portions.

I feel the need to crawl around under the truck regularly anyway to keep an eye on things under there, so toting along a grease gun and hitting everything with a little grease seems like a good combination. Not sure it is necessary or required, but it is not going to hurt anything and is very inexpensive.

Whatever interval one decides is cool. We each have our ideas of what should be done.

 

Its funny that you mentioned the old farmer, I use to help out a farmer from church every year at harvest time, we would be out in the field for awhile then he would pull up in the combine and start off loading corn, I would jump out of the tractor to stretch out and grab the grease gun, he would say I greased everything before we started harvest, mind you he already had all the beans out, about a 1000 acres worth, I said I thought you farmers were all grease natzi's? He would just shrug his shoulders, I guess he didn't care because he was always trading everything off for new equipment every two years.

 

Just talked to a retired UPS fleet manager. They ran Chevron at 30,000 mile intervals on their Mack's, didn't replace any bearings or do overhauls and ran them to 1.6 million then scrapped them because the rest of the truck was rotting out. Sure there were trucks here and there that maybe needed work, but as a whole that was their routine and experience with them.

 

I would never put any Lucas products in my engine or especially the transmission.
Actually I just greased my truck today, grease is cheap.
Main and rod bearings are cheap, especially before the warranty runs out. 99% of additives are proven to be 100% BS, the Prolongs of the world are just for promotion, nothing is better than the pure product.
We had an 18 speed come in with major problems the eaton guy came over to look, they had the top off he just looked in and said "0" warrenty. Lucas. They put in an exchange due to the major damages, that is one of very few I ever saw get an exchange, we had 5 of the best gear people, always busy.
Just a thought!

 

Which is why I have clarified that in any of my posts regarding OCI's.

I am just assuming that he was generalizing. I do not know if they really got by with a 100% record or not.

 

10k for me and 5k for grease in severe duty. ( What I call it ) Mystic 15 w 50 with Mack filters at 800k. Runs cooler, quieter , better.

And I use this : few years back...at the fleet we had a mix of power in a mix of duty. Only common denominator was extended high idle for PTO ops. Shop mgr decided to put an end to all this type of discussion and ran a test:

He bought everybody's filter and everybody's oil and ran everybody's everything supported by spectro analysis . Nothing mattered in any combo except change interval, at 12 k metal content went through the roof time after time. It just didn't matter, the graph spiked every time in the high 12k range.........

Good enough for me.......and of course, JMO ( std issue disqualifier of a truckers opinion )

 

I was taught that grease and oil are the cheapest overhaul and repairs you will not need. You can buy a lot of grease for the cost of of any one part. You have to go under the truck at least once a week anyway to look it over, how hard is it to take a grease gun, and give every Zert a shot Brake "S" cams a few.

 

I do mine at 12K AND Grease jod at 6K miles cummins n14 almost a million miles engine running great.. NOW wich is the best oil i use mobil delvac.