Techsan

I have an 01 ZO6 and I have owned it for a year and have only put about 700 miles on it. I only drive it on the weekends the rest of the time it is in the garage. My question is should I change the oil and other fluids at a certain time as far as months rather than mileage, because it could take me a while to put 3000 miles on it. Thanks for any input.

hotwheels57

Stand by for the normal debate on this issue, pro/con. The owners manual says once a year or by DIC oil life % monitor.

"An oil and filter change is cheap insurance" is the usual response when this gets asked.

BTW, 3,000 miles is not the standard anymore with synthetic oil and filters. You can trust the oil life monitor which computes the oil life remaining on a logarithm formula, depending on how you drive your car. A remaining 0% oil life is closer to 5,000-6,000 miles for most owners.

I go by the DIC on my car. And like you, some years I don't put even a thousand miles on it because of winter snow and summer monsoon weather. I have trouble understanding how my oil/filter is fine at 364 days old according to the oil life monitor, but needs to be replaced at 365 days, regardless of the mileage. I'm not suggesting to go for two or three years w/o a service because more than likely you'll just forget.

If in doubt, take an oil sample and have it analyzed...

tony car4a

Yes, at least once a year regardless. (You may want to find an oil change place 1,000 miles away and enjoy the ride)

Jims79

every spring I chg mine. some guys chg the oil before the winter nap.

vettenuts

The manual states at a minimum every 12 months and that is usually the trigger on mine as well. Hopefully some day I will have time to drive it enough to change the oil because of mileage

CHJ In Virginia

There is an easy way to solve the problem - Get that car out of the garage and drive it !! Run enough miles on it to get the DIC to 50% and then change - Vettes were meant to be driven - not looked at in the garage.

Dope

I too change my oil every spring, that's it. Only has 29k miles after 12 years.

Up here in the Northeast I can only drive my car roughly 6 months out of the year. My commute is a mere 5 miles so even if I'm driving it every day all summer, we're only talking 50 miles a week. Times 26 weeks, that's 1300 miles a year commuting. So at almost 2.5k miles per year, I'm still driving it a lot, just not far. Living in the suburbs of Boston means you don't have to go far to get anywhere.

Dope

JW Motorsports

For you GM suggests 1 year

Techsan

I would love to drive it all the time, but I have a company car and i have to drive customers around at times, but I wish i could drive it more than just on weekends. Thanks for the help.

printmanjackson

you are not doing the car any favors by not driving it.

I change mine once a year which is about 3,000 miles

rboineau

Why waste $ and oil? Change it every 2-3 years; especially with synthetic oil you will be fine. Now I would not go that long if all you ever do is poke around town, but if on those occasions when you do drive your car you get it out on the highway and give it a good warm-up and run, your oil can certainly go 3 years or so with low mileage. Hell, I've run dino oil (Castrol GTX) two and three years in several high performance engines that see low mileage and those engines show no wear or sludge/varnish build-up when looked into.

lionelhutz

3000 miles or once a year is just a waste of oil.

Peter

bobby777

A garage queen vette is like an aged fine wine--Ill take the fine wine over your bottle of mogan david-