Never Change The Oil???

[Milan]

Yesterday, I received a flyer from the local Farm and Fleet store, on the front page it advertised an MTD push mower with a Briggs and Stratton engine.

Interestingly, the ad stated, "New check & add oil feature - no oil changes needed"

Ok, this needs some explanation.

Well, guess what.... I found this web site:

http://www.briggsandstratton.com/us/en/justcheckandadd?cid=justcheckandadd_url

On that page, in big black text, it says, "NEVER change your oil again. Yes, never."

It goes on to say: "Check the oil. With the new EXi engine, simply check the oil level and if needed, add oil. For other engines, read our oil change how-to. Searching for oil? Find your oil type and order online."

I do not see where there is an explanation of the major breakthrough in technology that allows this, maybe someone else here knows of it, but, this just has to be one of the best-kept secrets ever, just wait until the automobile manufacturers find out about it.

 

[Mike M]

LOL !!! That's been happening to old Briggs mower engines for years.

 

[John M]

Wonder what the "regular maintenance" part is, drain oil once a year and replace?

 

[JMOR]

(quoted from post at 10:55:53 04/16/15) LOL !!! That's been happening to old Briggs mower engines for years.

hat? They don't last long enough to need oil change? :twisted:

 

[Dean]

It's a marketing strategy rather than any technological improvement.

For most owners, the engines are discarded long before engine failure due to oil breakdown will occur.

Of course, the engines will last longer if the oil is changed regularly.

Dean

 

[Steve@Advance]

I guess that's intended for the "Come buy a new one every year" crowd.

Probably not a good idea for those of us that pick one up off the curb and keep it running for 20 years! LOL

 

[psimmer]

I knew a guy that used to do that with lease vehicles. Just kept them full, said he wasn't going to buy them anyway. Can't remember, but he might have done one just before he turned them back in.

 

[DeltaRed]

In 1977 I bought a '67 fordF100 pickup.It had just shy of 100,000 miles. The (352)engine was toast/worn out. The old man told me he had NEVER changed the oil in it! "Oil never wears out,It just gets dirty.Just keep clean filters on,it will be fine" he said. Bull pucky!Worn so bad that it was beyond 'rebuilding. I bought it anyway. 'Installed' a 'souped'390.Got 200,000 more miles out of it before I traded it off.I'd figure out a way to chance the oil...... BTW,that old Ford would run like the wind!Dual straight pipes(really cackled),650 dual pumper 4 bbl,planed heads ........ We called him "White Lightning".

 

[Dean]

Probably to regularly clean and/or replace the air filter (and, of course the now mandatory fuel caveats).

Most homeowner catastrophic small engine failures result from clogged air filters resulting in overly rich mixtures washing the oil film from the aluminum cylinder bore.

Dean

 

[Dean]

Bingo.

This is one reason why one should never buy a lease return vehicle.

Dean

 

[Tom in TN]

I remember reading a long time ago about the fleet of taxi cabs in Chicago. Primarly, if not exclusively, they were using Marathon automobiles. The article stated that they never changed the oil in any of their vehicles. Of course, the cabs took such a beating that they ended up wholesaling them when they were just a few years old.

Anyone remember Checker Marathon?

Tom in TN

 

[sourgum]

Heat is an enemy of engine oil. It breaks down the additives in oil. The longer you run between changes the more heat your oil is exposed to. And the oil gets dirtier the longer you run. Think air cooled engines run slightly hotter than water cooled engines, so oil additives may break down quicker. I would stay with a normal change interval if I had one of those new air cooled engines. Do think the newer synthetic oils could run longer change intervals. But who runs expensive synthetic oil in a mower or tiller engine.

 

[WGM]

Have been buying lease return vehicles for years. All have been great at a fraction of the price of new.

 

[Billy Shafer]

Had that happen yesterday. Lady brought me a mower that wouldn't start. Replaced the two pound air filter with a new light weight one. Cranked right up.

 

[David G]

Checker used a Chevy drivetrain.

 

[Dick2]

I think that they used Chevy 350 engines in the Checker cabs.

 

[Dick2]

Might be that it uses oil so fast that just adding oil is equivalent to an oil change?

I remember the hype about the engine in the Tucker automobiles; the ads said that the engines were sealed so there would never be a need to add oil. But then, they never produced any cars for sale so who would know.

 

[Grampy]

I run 'expensive' synthetic in all my small engines. Because I know they will get changed in the spring and then we will get busy. There probably won't be any more small engine oil changes the rest of the season ! Got way bigger fish to fry. We've only 'lost' one engine, a Briggs on a small pump, a valve spring retainer broke.

 

[Leroy]

I thought it was the 6 cylinder and not the 8 cylinder

 

[INCase]

The decks always go bad on me, even if I clean them out, LONG before the motors go bad. but i do change the oil about every 2 years (low hours).

 

[D beatty]

Yes they did sell the 51 cars they built and of the 51 cars (as of a few years ago) there are still 47 of them still running and in collections.

 

[D beatty]

That must have been a few years back because if you lease a vehicle you sign a lease agreement and in that agreement you have to maintain it and have paper work to show it has been serviced if not done by leaser.

 

[Mike M]

Same as enterprise !

 

[jim castleman]

I think the technology is there for hermetic engines, but that would ruin the economy-less big oil money, fewer tree huggers, less new EPA laws, fewer lies from all the politicians and my tractors would use older API oils and be fine.

 

[RandyB(MI)]

What ruins most "push mowers" since that is what the poster is referring to, is either hitting crap and bending cranks and/or shearing the flywheel key or mowing ditch banks so steep the oil all goes to one side so it can't splash. Not to mention gunked up carbs and mice peeing on the flywheel and eroding loose the adhesive attached magnets on flywheel.

 

[notjustair]

I remember getting an old Jacobsen push mower from my grandmother. I went to change the oil first thing. It had no hole on the bottom of the deck to drain the Briggs. I had to remove the engine to change the oil. I'm doubting grandma had ever done that since she bought it new. I don't think I changed the oil after that. It used enough that I was always adding fresh.

 

[T in NE]

For a 67 truck engine to run a hundred thousand the old guy was probably right.

 

[DLMKA]

I brought a brand new Husqvarna push mower with the Briggs engine. Used it the better part of a season and hit a stick buried in some tall grass and it started shaking real bad. You guessed it, bent crankshaft. I never did change the oil in the lifetime of that mower. I think parts that make up a new small engine will fail long before the oil is wore out.

 

[hd6gtom]

We see that here at the dealership ALL the time usually cost somewhere between $2500.00 and $10000.00 to fix the problems created because uncle Joes brother in law twice removed said it was ok to run xyz oil brand for thousands of miles beyond the recommended oil change intervals.

 

[JayinNY]

I can believe that, 1 of 2 things, they either want you to ruin it faster, so you can buy a new one, or the engines are just throw away junk, so why bother changing the oil! Save the planet. Lol

 

[IaLeo]

Why not just keep the drainings for the 'next oil change'? That would qualify wouldn't it? No need to waste resources!
IaLeo

 

[johnlobb]

A lot of those taxis used a 'toilet paper" filter. I used to drive a 1966 Dodge slant 6 in Ann Arbor when going to school (Veterans Cab) and it had one. Owner never changed oil, just put a new roll of toilet paper in every so often.

 

[RN]

Checker cabs in Chicago? Engines? continental flatheads, OHV 6 cylinders and later Chevy 283 'commercial' tight cam timing, low compression V8s. Powerglide trannies on the Continentals most times. The Salvation Army sedans sometimes had 3 speed standard with overdrive trannies. Start driving cab for checker and have no seniority you take what you get at start of shift- and that means sometimes a no radio Continental 6 engine. Get lucky and you may get a radio and a Chevy V8 that can do the airport run and keep up with expressway traffic. About 1980 or sometime the emissions and safety standards laws, fuel economy caught up with Checker and they had to either redesign or quit making the old blunt nosed, big door with head clearance sedans/Marathons-- made more sense to quit making the Marathon and get ex-police reconditioned Ford crown Vics for the taxi companies Checker and Yellow. RN- 2 semesters of driving checker in Chicago in much younger years.

 

[pat sublett]

oil needs changing because it is diluted with fuel especially with gummed up carb float valve seats from using ethanol. Briggs will do anything to sell engines or cut manufacturing cost. They are worried about them running past the warranty date. If you had rather buy a new engine every year than change oil, go for it.

 

[RN]

Lawnboy? had a couple models like that-oil tank to be filled and no changing needed. The engine was a 2 stroke from OMC and the oil tank fed a injector system like a Yamaha system or later a crankshaft bearing to rod bearing like Suzuki system. earliest system at beginning did NOT have a oil minder for oil tank- some blown engines resulted from usual 'forgot to check the oil like manual said to do' and lots of later engines came into shops with the 'no start' or 'engine died and won't restart' symptom of oil minder working when tank gets empty. Fill oil tank, wait 5 minutes and then it starts, runs fine. $49.95 for emergency service and tune up includes a air cleaner check, exhaust port and spark arrestor check and another copy of operators manual trouble shooting page with highlighted 'if engine stops, check the oil tank'. Emissions laws really hard on sales of 2 strokes now, not sure if Lawnboy is still made for other than California markets. RN

 

[ss55]

I usually have to replace the plastic wheels on inexpensive push mowers before the engines wears out. Maybe if I stop changing the oil I won't have to replace anymore wheels?

 

[john in la]

I can believe it.
I have a car with a automatic that you never change the transmission fluid.
It does not even have any way to drain the fluid.
Been going over 200,000 miles on the original transmission fluid.

 

[MarkB_MI]

The fact is that half of all lawnmowers never get an oil change from the day they're brought home until they throw a rod through the block. (Or, more likely, until they're stolen by the meth-head next door.) Actually, the oil DOES get changed eventually, assuming you check it occasionally and top it off.

It sounds like Briggs is using better air filters and induction seals to keep dirt out of the intake and oil. That's probably a better strategy than to expect the average owner to bother with oil changes.

 

[Tom in TN]

Johnlobb,

I worked in a garage during my junior and senior years of high school in 1960 - 1962. We tried to sell some of the toilet paper oil filters on some of the older cars that had cannister style oil filters. We weren't very successful at selling them, and quite a few guys that I've talked to about those filters didn't believe that such a thing even existed.

Thank you for the validation of a memory from long ago.

Tom in TN

 

[Texasmark1]

Well with dino oil you have breakdown that is much less with synthetics as they do a much better job of resisting high temps. Full flow oil filters of the types used in cars and mowers are about 20 microns as the smallest particle that they'll catch. And the tricky advertising of "our filter gets 99% on multiple passes" and all that hoopla is still referencing 20 microns. Read the referenced test method.

To get smaller you have to go to a bypass filtration that traps down to around 5. Since the media is very restrictive, unless you have a 5 gallon bucket sized filter (exaggeration obviously), you can't pass the 5-20 gpm of oil your engine needs for lubrication. That's how OTR trucks get long change intervals and million miles between overhauls. They have a small bypass line that goes to this filter and over time all the oil in the engine eventually goes through it.

Maybe BS has some sort of time table on a new engine, and improved dust collecting, synthetic oil specified to maintain the warranty and all and figure that you'll sell or trade the thing before the engine dies because you didn't change the oil. I know when I used to use dino oil in my mowers, I'd have to change it 2-3 times a year. With syn. I do it once.


Guess they'll let out some specifics sooner or later.

Mark

 

[Hobo,NC]

I still work on a fleet of'em... Some have small block chebbys, inline 6's and one with a V6 the V6 started life on the bottle (propane)... They are a p=rick to work on... :x The guy that owns them will sell a few each year they fetch 8/9K.... He started collecting them in the early 80's and had a ware house full of them but his stash is getting low...

 

[John B.]

I agree with you 100% Pat.

When I was in school they told us "OIL DOESN'T BREAK DOWN" it becomes contaminated by the fuel, air, parts wearing and rubbing.

They do have better oils now than they did 35 years ago but they all turn black once the oil has been used in a running engine.

 

[GeneMO]

(quoted from post at 07:58:36 04/16/15)

(quoted from post at 10:55:53 04/16/15) LOL !!! That's been happening to old Briggs mower engines for years.

hat? They don't last long enough to need oil change? :twisted:

That was my first thought!!

Gene

 

[Jon Hagen]

I wonder if the i in EXi means injection ? Some years ago Cummins truck engines had an optional system to eliminate oil changes, just add oil and change filters. They injected crankcase oil into the fuel and burned it in the engine, so it slowly changed itself. All the operator had to do was change filters and fill the oil tank that kept the crankcase full.