So my wife, gullible little thing, stopped by midas at my request to get a normal oil change. They of course told her "oh no no, you need this super fully synthetic diamond version ultra pristine oil for your car." yadda yadda. She totally bit and ended up walking out of there with a $100 oil change.
This was probably about 6-8 months ago. Now the "change oil soon" light has come on again. I was always told that you could go much longer, even up to a year, with fully synthetic (assuming they actually even gave her the oil she paid for).
My question is, does the "change oil" light actually calculate for the difference of synthetics and regular oil? Or is it just using the same calculation of rotations and all as it would for regular oil?
I was about the put in mobil 1 extended performance (15000 miles / 1 year), but afraid the change oil light will come on every 6 months.
Your car calls for a semi synthetic oil, so, in a way, the service place wasn't really lying.
As stated above, the oil change reminder, assuming the reprogram was done, as well as all subsequent models, will (should) alert at a maximum of 7500 miles.
The alert is based off number of restarts, run time between starts (looking at operating temperature and for how long at that temperature), ambient cold start temperature, overall miles traveled and various other variables.
The earlier Cruze (and other GM) prior to the update, had a 10,000 mile upper limit........this was shortened because GM was seeing engine failures related to extended oil changes......the interval that they had set the system up for.
Regardless of oil used it should be changed on a annual basis regardless of mileage.
Lots of short trips will push lots of moisture into the crankcase.
Long trips load oil with blow by gasses, which, since are a result of combustion, are carbon based......this is why oil turns black....it is keeping carbon and other contaminates in suspension resulting from burning a hydrocarbon.
Synthetics are more tolerant of this and this is part of the reason they can survive higher mileage.
My driving is easily 95% short trip and I'm showing 10% life remaining around 3500 miles.......I only use M-1 EXT, and it gets changed at 4000 miles......about ten months for this car.
For me, the benefit outweighs the expense.....specifically, a synthetic reduces starter/battery load during cold weather starting, it is faster lubrication to cam bearing area, and more tolerant of turbocharger heat at the shaft bearings.
Likely, the engine will do just fine with semi-syns but the cost difference is too close, so I consider it a wash.
Anyways, during warranty, annual changes not exceeding 7500 miles are all the car is looking for.......you choose the oil and as long as it has a dexos certification, you are golden.
Beyond that, you can experiment all you want.....it is your engine.
Rob