When should you do your first oil change? According to Subaru at 3k miles. According to me and alot of people on this board between 1k-1.5k miles. Which is it? What about this supposably special break-in oil which should be left in till 3k miles, fact or fiction? Boy I sure would love to know. I used to have a VW and the people at the VW Vortex forum and VW itself sware by the fact that you should leave the special factory oil till 5k miles. They also claim that it's some special break-in oil. Is this true a special break-in oil, or is this some kind of snake oil. I know VW has maintencance included for 2 year or 24k miles so I can see them telling people not to change it. But what about us. We don't have free maintenances included. I have 476 miles on my car now and would love to get an answer to this mystery oil question soon.:confused:

No one can tell me for sure whether this magic break-in oil excist???
And yes I've used the search option. Try searching for oil change. You will get over 1000 responses. Went thru the first 10 pages with no definete answer one way on another.

VAG products do come with a break-in oil to be run the first interval (varies depending on engine).

I have heard of no such thing for Subaru, yet. I won't delve into the "oil change interval" argument :) Core values are best left for discussion at the pub.

James

Why not follow the manual? Why do so many people think they know more about how to maintain Subaru engines than the folks that built them?

Oldnslow, I'll try to answer your question, from my point of view.
I certainly don't have any delusions that I know more about my car than the Subaru engineers who designed it. However, the reality of it is that much of what is in the owner's manual, particularly maintenance issues, are influenced by the marketing dept. as much as by the engineering dept.
If it were totally up to the engineers, I'm sure they would build a much better car than they already do, but they must also build to a price point which severely limits them. The same thing with the recommended maintenance schedules. The trend these days is to offer free maintenance for the warranty period of the car. This is very appealing to most Americans. It is a selling point. Also, they are not going to recommend 3000 mile oil changes if they are paying for them. Stretching them out to 7500 or so saves them a great deal of money without actually "damaging" the engine. It may shorten the life of the engine but will not cause catastrophic failure. Most people don't keep their cars long enough to worry about the shortened lifespan - it will still last a long time.
Subaru doesn't offer free maintenance but they, as well as most all manufacturers, feel that they must also tout longer maintenance schedules in order to compete. For one thing, most Americans don't want the hassle of frequent oil changes and their perception may actually be that if an engine needs more frequent oil changes than the competition, it must not be as good.
It is a cut throat world out there in terms of the bottom line. The bean counters control what happens at most companies, and the engineering dept. just does what they can within the restraints given to them.
So.....that's why some enthusiasts who have a respect for fine machinery, will adhere to a maintenance schedule that they are more comfortable with. If you are comfortable with what the owner's manual says, fine. Stick with it and the car should do fine. But it never hurts to to do more than the minimum for your car.
An analogy is, a person can live a long time eating nothing but junk food and getting no exercise but chances are, it will eventually catch up to them and probably shorten their lifespan, perhaps considerably. But if that same person would have eaten a healthy diet and exercised regularly, they most likely would have lived longer and been more fit to boot.
My opinions only. Do what you feel is best.

Harrydog. The problem with all of the talk about frequency of oil changes is that everything except the maintainence schedule from Subaru is anecdotal. It is even unclear what, if any, break in oil may or may not be in the new WRX. Like many people, I have always changed oil every 3000 miles, but my other two cars are each 30 years old(911 and BMW) and all cars from that era recommended more frequent oil changes than vehicles made recently(even Porsche and BMW now recommend lengthy intervals between oil changes, and I can't believe it is just marketing to save the expense or hassle of the customers of these very expensive machines). In any event, I'm going to change to Mobil 1 at 3000 for the first oil change, and change gear oil and differential to Redline GL-5 75W90NS. Because I'm old and set in my ways I'll likely do oil changes every 3000 miles after that. What fluids and frequenciy schedule did you decide on?

According to this Legacy Outback FAQ, Subaru does not use special break-in oil:

http://www.toad.net/~rrubel/outbackfaq.html

Every FAQ I've seen suggests that you should do your first oil change at 1000-1500 miles (Outback FAQ, Legacy B4 FAQ, Impreza FAQ). In the UK, the service manual specifies the first oil change at 1000 miles, just after the break-in period. This FAQ also suggests that the UK cars have special break-in oil, but not elsewhere in the world:

http://www.sidc.co.uk/faq.htm

Conclusion: It is OK to change the oil at 1K miles, whether or not it actually has break-in oil in it! I'm going to go ahead and change my oil right now (just under 1100 miles), putting in more Dino juice. Then at 4000 miles, I'm switching to Synthetic.

--Jason

My reasoning for changing at 1000 miles is that the vast majority of break in occurs within the first 1000 miles, even within the first 500 or 600 miles. That is a fact.
I want to get clean oil in there as soon as I can.
In the past I've always changed my oil approx. every 3000 miles. In the case of a previous car, an Audi S4, I used Redline oil and still changed it every 3000 miles but it was not a daily driver and so I wasn't putting a ton of mileage on it and the cost was bearable. With the WRX I will be using Redline as well but will change it at 5000 mile intervals. If it was a non-turbo I would use Mobil 1.
I feel very strongly that manufacturers have lengthened their recommended drain intervals primarily due to marketing strategies. Engines have become better over the years and as I said before, the longer intervals will not cause serious damage or catastrophic failure, only somewhat more wear which won't show up for years and most people won't care about that. It certainly can't hurt to change the lifeblood of your engine more frequently than recommended.
As to Porsche having very long drain intervals, remember that a 911 has 12 quarts of oil in a dry sump system, so the oil is staying cooler, circulating through the engine less often and lasting longer in the process.
I'm not saying that those who follow the recommended maintenance schedule are doing anything wrong, only that one can be more meticulous than the factory says you have to be. That's overkill for most people but for others it's the only way to go.

My reasoning for changing at 1000 miles is that the vast majority of break in occurs within the first 1000 miles, even within the first 500 or 600 miles. That is a fact.
I want to get clean oil in there as soon as I can.


Um, no. The engine is still very tight at 1000 miles. I noticed an improvement at 2500-3000 ish. The UK guys have always said this about the EJ20.

I doubt there is any huge harm changing the oil early, unless they do have break-in oil, but in any case, the oil filter is there to collect any swarf.

Glenn

Um, engine tight or not, the vast majority of break in occurs very early on in the process. The break in process may continue for many thousands of miles but the most amount of wear between machined parts occurs in the first 600 miles or so.
Can anyone show me that Subaru has included a break in additive to the oil? If there isn't a "special" break in oil, then it is very prudent to change the oil early. Even if there is, it would still do no great harm to change early. The worst case is that the break in process would take longer. But I really doubt there is a special oil in the factory fill. Very few manufacturers do that. Audi and VW are the only ones I know of.

I agree with harrydog. The majority of engine brake-in occurs in the first 500 miles or so, or actually the first 5 or so hours of operation. Hours of operation is a better indicator of brake-in duration or even service intervals for that matter. All miles are not equal, hwy vs. city etc.. I am talking about the initial brake-in period. This is when all the internals are worn in enough to where we can take advantage of all the performance of the engine as per design (i.e. WOT, redline, high speed is allowed etc. etc.).

After that period the engine will still go through a longer term brake-in period that can last up to 10k miles for some engines. This all depends on engine design, materials used and machining processes. A good gauge of when an engine is "fully broken-in" is when oil consumption stabalizes. Some engines including the WRX appear to brake-in rapidly as indicated by no oil consumption. Others engines (BMW is notorious) consume oil for thousands of miles before it stops.

Anyways, it is prudent to change the oil/filter at say 1000 miles, it is conservative and no harm will be done. It is probably very beneficial. If you wait until 3000 miles, it probably won't matter as indicated by Subaru either. For all my new engines, I change the initial oil/filter at 1000 miles regardless of manufacturers recommendation. I have had nothing but positive success with my engines. I will then perform 5k mile oil/filter change intervals with a good synthetic oil.