Ok, so today I am driving home and got the msg in the msg center to "Change Oil Soon". The truck currently has 11,000km (6800mi) on it. I changed the oil about a month ago with 6500km (4000mi) on the clock. The last 2800 miles included about 1700 miles towing my 8500lb trailer.

I am thinking the dealership forgot to reset the oil life monitor when the oil change was completed. This in turn means that the oil life monitor is mileage based and not actually based on the condition of the oil via sensors or whatever.

What do you all think? Has anyone come to a similar conclusion or is it possible my oil is toast with only 2800 miles on it?

Should I reset the monitor without changing the oil and see if the message comes back? Should I change the oil again but take a sample of the current oil for analysis?

Any thoughts on this are appreciated.

 

Had my oil changed 2 weeks ago. Since then I have put ~1200 miles on it, ~ 600 of that was towing. Last Friday my change oil message showed up. Called the dealership and they said the tech must not have reset the computer.
I finally had a chance to swing by there on Wednesday @ 7:00 AM, and sat there until 3:00 pm when the service advisor came out and said they are trying to arrange a rental car for me because they needed to do more research. Well, they finally told me today (Friday) I could have my truck for the weekend but they did order parts for my airconditioned seat that they finally figured out after 4 visits, and have to bring it back for a day when the parts arrive. I asked the service guy about the oil message and he didn't know what they did because the mech has not entered it into the computer yet and the ticket was still open because of the parts on order for the seat. He said I will get all the paperwork when they fix my seat.

Anyway back to your comment, it sure looks like (based on our two messages) something has to be reset when the oil is changed. I also thought it was based on oil quality, not longevity.

Thom

 

I received this yesterday with mine also as I rolled past 7,000.
My oil was changed around 5,000.
The dealer forgot to reset it.
I'm going to just reset it because I'm going to change at 10,000 or before and I'll reset it again when I do. I don't want to keep clearing the message each time I startup until I get to that mileage.

 

Well, if your premise is that the system has some way to determine the status of the oil In the crankcase then I think you are wrong. Almost certainly it works the same as every other manufacturer and measures time since last reset, time accumulated at a particular oil temperature, rpm, idle time, number of regenerations and mileage, all of which is plugged into a proprietary Ford algorithm to determine when to change the oil.

 

Bingo! We have a winner. The 6.7 is not some magical Blackstone edition mobile oil analysis laboratory. I remember Honda having it's own system that you had to reset back in the early 80s. Of course what we are dealing with is a little more sophisticated than a simple tripmeter, but it's somewhat the same princicple.

 

This is one of the good oil threads.

https://www.ford-trucks.com/forums/1...ification.html

There are a few others. I have been convinced that the oil life monitor thing is not just a mile ticker, system really is good enough to rely on as it does monitor vital things that give a good reliable measure of when to change the oil.

It does get confusing when the reset is forgotten.

 

That is what I figured too... a glorified mileage ticker, since it would not be possible to analyze oil on board. But 2800miles? I think it's fairly obvious the ticker wasn't reset the last time so I will take a sample for analysis and carry on until 10,000 miles and then switch to AMSOIL synthetic.

 

You could always reset the thing right now and see how much longer it takes, since you've decided to go to 10k anyway? IIRC, the guidance language in our owner's manuals suggests that 10k might be further than one should expect if one is towing very much. I don't have one in front of me, so I won't say what I believe the minimum mileage is that the OM guides one to expect.

 

I plan to change the oil again at 10K not run the oil for 10k. That would make it a 6k interval which is acceptable.

 

If it is not based on an oil sensor or mileage, maybe it is based on engine operating hours since the computer seems to be tracking time?

 

Mileage is one of the factors that goes into the computers algorithm (sp) for it figuring out when it needs to be changed.