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Costco Is Now Rationing Motor Oil Because the Global Shortage Is Getting Real (www.thedrive.com)
submitted 4 days ago by to c/latestagecapitalism@lemmy.world
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[–] 0 points 3 days ago* (4 children)

I mean, yeah, there's oil in there because there usually is still a transmission that has two gears (forward and reverse), so obviously there have to be gears and those obviously need lubrication. However, as there is nothing burned it usually really is just for lubrication and doesn't really accumulate dirt or deteriorates in other ways. In fact I just checked and both my cars have no transmission oil changes in their maintenance schedule because it just doesn't need to be replaced. Like, ever.

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  • [–] 8 points 3 days ago (3 children)

    The gears are usually not forward and reverse, just reduction gearing. Lifetime fluid is a misnomer. Differentials also are just moving gears with no pressure or combustion byproducts, but those get changed regularly. It depends whether you want your car to last past the “lifetime” as defined by the manufacturer or not. Personally, my cars get fluid changes, because my definition of lifetime is longer than the extended warranty period.

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  • [–] 5 points 3 days ago (2 children)

    Great, guess that means I should look into transmission oil changes at least for my golf... thanks for bringing that up, would have ignored it completely otherwise.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago (1 child)

    less than a liter goes in the front diff that I believe the reduction gearing is built into. At least on ICE vehicles they always do reduction

    Not a difficult change, not a lot of oil (<1 liter), do it every 50k km if you want to be super safe, but honestly even 80k km is probably fine. Idk if the video goes through it, but on absolutely any car you change the diff oil on - crack the fill plug open first - only once you know it's not seized shut should you open the drain plug.

    I make it a point to change on all my vehicles if I intend to keep them for any amount of time because I buy them heavily depreciated with tons of kilometers and the previous owners have almost always neglected it. Is it likely that I'd have a diff blow up on me if I didn't? Probably not, but nice to be safe and to know the next owner of the car won't have the diff blow up after a few months of ownership either.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 days ago

    We drove that car about 150k km. Yeah, I'm going to do that rather sooner than later.

    Our second car doesn't need that right now because we just had the parking brake replaced (different story, although I'm still salty about that one because the car obviously uses the parking brake to stop when on adaptive cruise control and thus wrecked it after about 120k km) and therefore just had all engine lubricants replaced. Still, I had really just assumed that this is a maintenance free part for both of them. Crap.

    Oh well, good thing I wanted to be a smartass about this one, I guess. The more you know. Again, thanks for bringing it up.

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