OK I'm somewhat confused on Oil with the Hyundai Elantra. I have the 2008 Elantra, and am currently a little over 700 miles. In my last car, which was a Ford, I pretty much always had my oil changed at every 3,000 miles, and it was regular oil. With this new car, and the warranty, I want to make sure I do things correctly with oil changes. According to the manual, and the service log that came with the car, it says to change the oil and filter every 7,500 miles. I called the dealership to see if it came with synthetic oil or something, but they stated the cars come with regular oil. My question on that is, doesn't that seem like an awefully long time for regular oil and filter?

Along with that, when I do get my oil changed....prolly still at around 3,000 miles, I'm thinking of switching to synthetic, which I've never used before. A friend of mine uses synthetic, and says he still changes his oil and filter at about every 3,500 miles. I thought you could go longer with synthetic between changes? Any ideas or tips would be greatly appreciated!

I did try searching for other similar topics like this but couldn't find any, so I hope I've posed in the correct area. Still getting used to the forums here.

If your car is under warranty it is best to use regular oil because you have the change the oil 7,500 or 6 months whichever comes first, in my opinon why waste money on synthetic or blend.

So but is it normal to go 7,500 miles on one fill of regular oil? I never heard of going that long on normal oil. Suppose it could be a Hyundai thing.....I've just always been used to changing every 3,000 to 3,500 miles. Just curious.

Just about every new car today has oil change intervals of 5,000 or 7,500 miles. Of course there is also a shorter service schedule for vehicles operated in a difficult environment; lots of stop & go traffic, many short trips in cold climates, towing, etc.). Dealers ALWAYS tell you to use the severe service schedule and they make more service revenue. Oils today are MUCH BETTER than years ago where 3,000 mile changes were absolutely necessary. So are the engine materials and filters. My rule of thumb is 5,000 miles or 6 months whichever is shorter.

One of my last vehicles was a Honda and that car actually told you by usage when to change oil...it looked at temperature, mileage, number of stops and starts, etc. My oil changes were about 5-6,000 miles according to the information system so this is consistent.

As far as synthetic it's a matter of personal choice. My wife's car is a turbo and sees lots of stop and go city driving so I use synthetic but still change at 5,000 miles. My others use regular dino oil.

This post has been edited by jeff3820: Sep 4 2008, 06:07 PM

Hi,

In my book says that I have to change every 7500 km (4661 miles)-severe conditions or 15000 km (9322 miles)-normal conditions. I'm changing at 15000 km or 1 year interval. I've seen some other car brands go up to 30000 km (18645 miles) - maybe on freeway 95% of the time cruising in 6th gear. I'm advising you that you take the full synthetic oil. If you have new car then first two changes should be at 4661 miles, and later at 9322 miles.


cheers!

I have 65000 miles on my Elantra. I have used Mobil 1 5-20 synthetic after the car's first oil change. The car has run flawlessly. Plus I have enjoyed an increase of 2-3 mpg in a mix of 70% highway/30% city. I have never had to add any oil between its 7500-8000 mile oil and filter changes, BTW, I use an ordinary Purolator oil filter

I also changed the tranny fluid to synthetic

You should change your oil more frequently than 7500. I would go with every 5000 miles.

As for synthetic or regular, keep in mind, synthetic gets dirty just as quickly as regular. If you are doing your oil changes frequently enough, regular oil is fine, don't spend the extra for synthetic.

This is EXACTLY the reason drivers are better off using conventional oil and changing at 5,000 miles compared with using synthetic oil and changing at 10,000 miles. Used oil analysis from Blackstone Labs shows that most engines have generated significant amounts of contamination by 10,000 miles. The oil may still be "like new", but the contaminants in the oil can cause wear and promote the formation of sludge and varnish in the engine.

By the way, the staff at Blackstone prefer to use conventional oil in their personal vehicles.

This topic has ALWAYS started a debate no matter what vehicle forum I have ever posted or lurked in. No matter WHAT HYUNDAI says, most Americans IMHO, seem to NEED to change their oil at the magic 3,000. It made me "uncomfortable" to say the least to read that number is 7500. The engineers can't be crazy, or is it just me? My 96 Explorer, which runs like a champ, has ALWAYS run on dino oil, and Im not gonna change it now. At 3,000 miles its filthy, mebbe a worn engine has something to do with it. My Lincoln, a 2001 Continental, started life on dino oil, I switched to synthetic 2 years ago..and IM not crazy to spend the $$, but it runs quieter and I noticed about a 2 mpg improvement...and it stayed that way to this day. And its dirty after 3000 or so too, even tho the recommended change is way higher..now comes the new ELANTRA...what am I gonna do? Its got only 300 miles on it, and I'm inclined to change the oil at 1000 or so just because thats what I ALWAYS did with a newie..sumpin bout metal flakes or factory crud....well...I'm running IT on synthetic...whichever brand I can find on sale that is...

On my ex car 1.8T I used to use synth blend and changed it every 3000Km to 3500kms, now that was a 15 years old car and it is running cool so far.

In my Elantra I use SHELL regular oil, why? first of all it is not a performance engine, it does not running at high revs, but it travels short distances, high temp, a lot of stops, so we change the oil every 5000kms, have never passed 3 months without changing oil.

In theory synthetic oils should last long because they keep their effectiveness more time than mineral, so you can change it in a longer interval, but changing the oil filter every 7500kms, that way you can "save" some money but at the same time synth oils at least double the price of a regular oil.

Someone has to support the oil companies.

Hi again,

I have an engine that uses max 0.1 litre of full-synthetic oil per 15000 km (9322 miles). It used 0.7 litre of oil /15000km and that was semi-synthetic brand. The engine is well tuned and running great. Keep in mind that more oil engine uses, more deposits there are, and more is the oil stressed (so to speak) with carrying the 'soot'. Oil must be good quality so it can perform most important task - oiling (and not cleaning/carrying carbon particles). Btw: yesterday I've crossed 15kkm mark and the dipstick is still touching FULL mark and it has brown color(not black!). I'm gonna change it at 16kkm (around 9944 miles). This is my experience with synth oil.


cheers!

In my 2008 manual, Hyundai recommends Quaker State oil. So i'm guessing it's dino oil :auto:

cheers
Kayakman

that's weird... mine is 2007 and the owners manual recommends SHELL--- so... mmm ...

I used to use Quaker in my old 200SX S13 semi-synth... no problems at all...

And just to further muddy the water (or oil) Ive ALWAYS used Castrol GTX in everything since waaay back in the day...if there were more peeps in this forum, i guarantee this thread could have 3,456 posts in it re OIL....btw I changed it at 993 miles and didnt use synth cuz it was the first oil change i did and the old wives tale is to let the valves/rings seat/seal properly..mebbe its just voodoo...but somewhere around 5-6k miles from here ill switch to 5/20 synth....dats de plan anywho....

Shell and Quaker State are owned by the same holding company.
I'm sure Shell et al are just giving cash or discounts to Hyundai to make the recommendation. For '08 they said to say Quaker State because that's what they're pushing.

As far as conventional/synth goes:
Unless required by the maker, they don't pay for themselves without running very long (think yearly) oil change intervals.
Even then, there's no notable upside versus doing normal-interval changes on conventional oils.
There are a handful of vehicle-by-vehicle exceptions, but those are only vehicles where the OEM oil change interval or oil specs were wrong. An example might be the one Camry that had a habit of sludging its oil.
On edit:
Oh yeah, one more thing: Due to a number of factors, many if not most 5W30 and 10W30 oils advertised as conventional are in fact semi-synthetic by the standards of 5-10 years back. All current 5W20 oils are semi-synthetics.


This post has been edited by tomjones76: Oct 8 2008, 10:56 AM

One other issue however is for those in cold climates during at least the winter.
I use full syn in all my vehicles, since while mosre costly, I don't need to use the engine block heater hardly ever, even down past -30F.
On startup, you can literally see the difference since the oil pressure gage makes pressure, (or the oil light goes out if that's all you can see) in way less than 1/2 the time when it is colder.
For vehicles that do lots of short hopes, (many starts relative to distance) the synthetic will have it's biggest benefit, since that is when most wear occurs.