Thanks for the reply. It helped alot. I just got done picking it up and setting it up at my house. It was the larger of the 2 lifts that they offer. Thats ok with me because I try to do everything on my Avalanche and my wife Minivan as well. What is the length of your ramps? I had to take out one of the center supports to let the ramps slide in more to fit in my garage. Also tell me more about the mats you have on the ramps and the floor under the legs. Thanks again. Oh and btw 600.00 for a used white powder coated one with 2 center lift bridges.

 

That's crazy expensive! Is that really for just an oil change and filter, or are they doing something else in addition? Maybe it includes more (like wiper blades, inspecting things, etc), like what they do for a scheduled oil service, and that's what they are quoting. My $74.99 for an oil change included a 15% discount, but it was just an oil change. Nothing more.

 

There should be a local MINI/Mini enthusiast club for you as well, ask on their web/blog/forum for a recomended local independant Maintenance Shop and then go there for your 'in-between' oil/filter service.

 

$180 for oil and filter. When I asked they said $180. I said, what?? Oil and filter? They said yes. My response !!! MINI Vegas is smoking too much rock. $45 did it on my own and it was actually fun. THE END.

 

Cool. How do you drop the ramp to get the car on and where did you buy it?
Another thing, one person on this board changed his oil after 1,200 miles and said it was "very black" and even said "it had bits of metal shavings in it." Is this from when they bored out the cylinder holes in the engine block? How can this wind up in the oil? I thought they clean out the engines before they install the cylinder heads. Should I go through the trouble of changing my oil after the first 1,200 miles? I guess $35 is cheap insurance for a new car even if only for my peace of mind.

 

I just had my oil changed after 2300 miles and the service tech said the oil he drained looked new.

 

Glad you were able to get the lift - 600.00 is a great deal. I have mine set at 14' which is the middle setting on the ramps when bolted together. I think it will go from 13.5' - 14.5', but 14' works for our Mini, Corvettes and Jeep. It should also be enough for the Avalanche and Minivan, but you'll probably want to use the Avalanche as the test vehicle for length. And, be sure to check the height of the garage door (in open position) before raising the lift with the Avalanche on the it. With our Jeep, I have to close the garage door, then jack-up the lift with the Jeep.

I bought the mats at Walmart. They are 18" x 30" and 20" x 30", made of recycled rubber and cost $2.99 ea and $3.99 ea. The reason I have two sizes is that I only bought 4, then decided I wanted 2 more. When I went back to the first Walmart, they were sold out. I went to a different store and they had them in the slightly larger size, so I bought 2 of those. You don't really need them, but I am obsessive and did not want to scratch the garage floor. Also, they are supposed to help keep the lift from sliding (according to Kwiklift), but I can't see that as being an issue given the weight of the lift or lift+vehicle.

The other thing I did was to buy some 5/8" rubber chair leg caps and put them over the ends of the rods on the front legs. The rods on mine were rough cut with some jagged edges and when I walked by a couple of times, I snagged my jeans. No big deal - just gives it a finished look, and again, I can be pretty obsessive about the cars and garage equipment. I can take a picture to show you when I get time.

You're gonna love having the lift. I comes in handy for so many things.

 

It works manually by jacking-up the rear cross-tube to raise or lower the lift to drive on or off (the rear legs raise or lower and lock into position).

It is a Kwiklift, see www.kwiklift.com for details.

 

I don't have a way to answer this that doesn't get very long winded but as a general rule, and IMHOP, full synthetic oil does not need to be changed every 3000 mi.

Your Mini will do just fine if you follow the mfg. suggested oil change interval of 15000 mi. (Make sure you are topping off between changes.)

I do agree with an early oil change during the break-in period, however.

Now if you are racing your car on the track (or you just drive every day like you are), all bets are off and the above statement does not apply.

Let the dogpile begin...

 

With regards to the comment that many here are sampling their oil and are not happy with what they are seeing at 7500 miles: that means absolutely nothing unless you have an unused oil analysis (UOA) to compare it to. Absolute numbers do mean something (oil quality compared to other oils) but not with regards to lubricating property or wear protection. To know how the particular oil in your engine is performing, you have to gauge it to it's new condition. It's the same with the engine. If your engine got 28 mpg average new and gets 28 mpg at 25K miles, while you may be unhappy that you're not getting 32 mpg the engines performance hasn't changed.

There are differences in oils out of the bottle, and better oils will perform better at 0 miles and at 15K, but you can't assume that all oils will suck at 15K. Some oils are better at 15K than others when new. VW learned that lesson on the 1.8T engine which originally spec'd conventional oil in a small crankcase (3.8 quarts). Massive sludge problems ensued. The solution was to spec synthetic oil and a larger oil filter to give more capacity. Problem solved.

 

You really can't go by looks at all.

Likely (after a few hundred miles on first oil) you would be able to smell the gasoline contamination from before the rings were seated.

At 1250 mile 'break-in' change for me, the oil looked great, although it still had gasoline odor,
color had gone from the very light (think Mazola Corn Oil) to the color of very strong coffee.

(My Turbo LeBaron @ 2500-3000 miles would have had the color of ink.)

I did filter the drained oil and found one 'chip' about 0.003" by 0.015" by 0.2" that looked like aluminum.

There were also about two dozen specs, from grain of sand size down to spec of dust size.

Cutting the old filter apart revealed a metallic sparkle of what looked like aluminum as well,
my next change will be an Annual MINI Dealer job and I will ask for the old filter to inspect again.

A strong magnet could find absolutely no trace of any iron or steel.

At 760 miles following the above change, oil is already the color of weak coffee, but no gasoline odor at all.
(Open the valve cover oil cap and sniff there.)

My MINI MA had told me that the factory had completed an initial run-in and flush change and from what I saw,
you would probably not have had problems from running this 'delivery' oil until first annual
(or whatever mileage you are comfortable with) change.

The gasoline contamination would increase the likelyhood of 'coking' in your TurboCharger's oil cooling and lubrication passages
and this would be the most likely cause of TurboCharger Failure down the road, after warranty protection.
(Valve stems/guides would be the main concern for non-Turbo Engines.)

My drained and filtered oil looks good enough for me to use in my next Lawnmower oil change and I have a couple other Briggs/Tecumsah engines as well.

I would like to have used it in my Honda Outboard, but it has absolutely no affinity for water.

 

In any case, my dealer doesn't mind doing an unscheduled oil change. They use the extracted oil to heat their service bays in the winter.

 

Yes, some of us *are* comparing the UOA to "virgin" analyses of the MINI 5W-30 oil. You're correct - the numbers would be meaningless otherwise (except for wear metals like iron and aluminum, which are not present in any motor oils "fresh out of the bottle").

What I discovered in my personal MINIs was that after 9k miles, the oil's flash point had decreased from 435F to less than 300F, the fuel dilution was up over 1.5%, the TBN had depleted down to the point that it was overrun by the TAN, and several of the wear metals were up at unacceptable levels.

Terry Dyson has a database of virgin analyses of just about every motor oil out there, so he knows how the used samples are performing compared to when the oil was new. He also knows what the various components of different engines are made of, so he can associate the various wear metals with the particular engine components they're coming from.

And you're also correct that some oils will perform better over time than others. I've been getting much better results with RLI's BioSyn 5W-30 than I've ever gotten with the MINI 5W-30, so that's probably what I'm going with from here on out.

I have the MINI oil back in the crankcase right now, because another poster brought up the possibility that my earlier crappy numbers with the MINI oil might have been because the engine had less than 20k miles on it. The MINI oil that's in there now has been in since 33k miles, and I'll pull it at about 42k, so it'll be 9k miles on a fully broken-in engine. I'll post the results with the rest of my results and see if the MINI oil does any better with more total miles on the engine.

 

$175 for an oil change is out of this world. I only pay $75-80 bucks. I think that dealership is gouging folks...the highest I've seen around here is $120.

 

I LIKE that lift.

 

No doubt a great lift. Need to stress that for an oil change you need no lift at all.

On a flat floor,
there is 4½" clearance to the oil drain and a 17" square pan would fill to less than an inch deep w/4.5 quarts of drained oil.

(4.5 Quarts = 260 in³ ) Be sure to read this thread, so you don't drain transmission by mistake.

 

True - for those wishing to DIY oil change the lift is not needed. I have mine for my other vehicles, so it comes in handy for working on the Mini as well... I did not mean to imply a lift was a requirement, it just makes it easier on me.

 

I'm not trying to be argumentative or confrontational, just informative. You can't compare the oil sample in your specific engine to a random virgin sample. You have to compare the specific oil that went into your engine and track changes. Otherwise it's like comparing an individuals cholesterol number to somebody elses, or even an average of others. Yours might be higher today than that average but it doesn't tell you anything about the trend or whether your new diet lowered your number by 50.

Nobody is going to have this info on a low mileage engine unless they changed the oil early and ran a UOA at that time for future comparison. Since most of this discussion concerns the length of time before the first oil change, I'm assuming most don't have this data set. Having said that, I haven't searched the entire forum to find out. Since this is such a hot topic, maybe a sub-folder under Maintenance or Lubrication would be helpful.

 

Persons who have had their oil analyzed have led me to beleive that about 8k between changes is very safe, 15k (which is when the first change occurs if you wait for the indicator or wait a year) is a bit long wrt some oil wear parameters. I don't remember anyone having their oil analyzed twice on the same batch before. Interestingly, my first indicated change was at a year (14k) then the true indicated change at 19k 2 weeks ago (I had 21k on it by the time I got to the dealer), now the next one will be about 8k after that. So except for the first one it's gonna be every 8k.

 

I'm not sure what you're saying, unless you think that virgin samples of the MINI 5W-30 oil are going to vary significantly depending on what dealer sold you the bottle. But I'm pretty confident that the sample of unused MINI 5W-30 that Terry analyzed for his database is chemically very close to the MINI 5W-30 oil that I put in my engine. Likewise, he's tested unused RLI 5W-30 and can use that as a baseline to compare the used RLI 5W-30 I send him.

I'm not evaluating the performance of the RLI oil based on virgin MINI numbers, or vice-versa.

Of course, if the chemical characteristics of unused oil of an particular brand/weight varies significantly from bottle-to-bottle, then that's going to make analysis problematic, but I don't think that's the case.

 

The characteristics can vary from bottle to bottle for several reasons. Oil and additives are produced in batches and the exact compositions will vary as well. I'm not talking about large differences, and virtually all particular brands (Mobil 1 5W-30 for example) will consistently be within the companies quality envelope. However, it is enough difference to matter when you're doing oil analysis using mass spectrometers that can measure incredibly small amounts of chemicals and elements. And contrary to a previous comment, UOA will often show trace metals because of the sensitivity of the test. These metals could come from any point in the refining/packaging process.

That's why an oil analysis at 10K miles showing iron at 100 isn't necessarily alarming. If it was 5 new, 50 at 5K, and 100 at 10K, the oil is still doing it's job. If it keeps doing it's job for another 5K miles, you should see iron at 150-160 at 15K. That would be a consistent wear rate for that particular metal. Of course there are several metals that make up rings, cylinders, and bearing, all which show up in the oil.

Now if the fresh oil had an iron number of 10, was 50 and 5K, and 100 at 10K, the wear rate is no longer linear and would suggest a change might be in order. But you need to know where you started from. Labs that do analysis will make suggestions about whether to change the oil if they have a UOA to compare to.

 

That may be important for aircraft, but probably not crutial for MINIs. I think the main things we would be looking for are flashpoint, fuel dilution, antifreeze, water, and the condition of the additives. With new MINIs, the metals are going to be high from break-in.

We aren't looking for signs that a spcific part is about to fail, we are trying to determine a safe interval for oil changes.

 

I am going to throw a curveball into the mix. The link is an article I found as I was getting KPMIN. Enjoy!!!

- KP

Happy Motoring.

https://www.northamericanmotoring.co...3&postcount=14

 

Some thoughts on that article:

It is mainly talking about using synthetics over mineral based oils. That is a non-issue here. MINIs require synthetic oil. You could void your warranty by running mineral based oil.

They tested up to 10,000 miles. We are talking about MINI recommendations that start at 15,000 miles and go up for most drivers. Some have reported over 20,000 miles as the recommendation of the OBC.

Re: seating the rings, we don't have much control over that. It is said to happen in the first ten miles or so. We are pretty much stuck with whatever oil MINI has used. There are some claims that MINI runs engines at the factory. Perhaps they have a procedure for seating the rings. There haven't been many reports of smoke and oil consumption on NAM. So, I wouldn't worry about that.

The article indicates that there is significant degradation in the lubrication quality of Mobil 1 at 10,000 miles.
Nowhere in the in the article does it recommend going more than 10,000 miles on a synthetic oil. The author says he only drives about 5,000 miles per year and does an oil change annually.