# What's your oil Change interval - 3750mi or 7500mi?? (R50) ('04 SE 4x4)



## K03Sport (Jun 1, 2008)

Basically, what oil change interval do you do on your Pathfinder? Nissan has the 3750 or 7500, but personally I think the 3750 is too few miles and 7500 is too much for this engine. Driving is mostly city with scattered hwy.

Our SE doesn't see too much road use (wife's car) and does approx 7K-8K miles / year. So, a 3750 change interval would be 6 months and the 7500 would be about every 12. The truck usually sees normal operating temps, but doesn't do any towing or heavy 4-wheelin'.

I just did an oil change with Castrol Syntec 5w-30 (5qt bottle at Walmart - $20) and a new filter at 21,800 miles. The truck has had several oil changes prior to this, but I don't have the info in front of me (I think it has had 4 plus this one).

So, (R50) owners what oil change interval do you follow - Nissan's or your own and what oil does your beast get.

A full fluid change is probably gonna happen at 30K - trans and diffs.


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## 2001pathy_SE (Apr 9, 2006)

i do an oil change every 5,000 -6000 miles , i use mobil one synthetic, and i only drive the truck around 10,000 miles a year. so basically i change the oil twice a year.


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## NPath (Dec 12, 2004)

I've got an 06 Pathfinder and change mine about every 2100+miles (3500km). 

I bought an oil change package from nissan and get it done every 3 months. I get 4 a year, so what the hell, early changes mean clean oil. )


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## MattyDK23 (Nov 30, 2007)

I change the oil in my '03 every 5000km... about 3000mi. Schedule 1 in the service manual says every 6000km, but I'm just used to the 5000km/3 month adage. I suppose in the summer I could probably even follow Schedule 2 and go 12000km between changes, but I'd prefer to play it safe.

One thing I never understood, though... in the '01 and '02 owners manuals, it says synthetic oil is OK. '03 and '04 says not to use synthetic. What changed between 02 and 03? Regardless, I just use dino oil -- Quaker State High Mileage last change.


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## K03Sport (Jun 1, 2008)

> One thing I never understood, though... in the '01 and '02 owners manuals, it says synthetic oil is OK. '03 and '04 says not to use synthetic. What changed between 02 and 03? Regardless, I just use dino oil -- Quaker State High Mileage last change.


Good question...the only possible reason could be the seal(s) or type of seals used in the engine. I think putting sythetic in early and staying with synthetic shouldn't cause any harm.

However, switching to a full synthetic on an engine with lots of miles or km may cause leaks around some of the engine seals.

Living in some cold environments, I'm not too thrilled to run a standard oil so the sythetic just gives me the warm fuzzies. When in AK, every car got Mobil 1 0w-40, mainly for piece of mind.

Putting in dino juice for the schedule1 (3750mi) service probably isn't any big deal, but and extended service drain, schedule 2 (7500mi) I would think that a sythetic is a must especially with a V6. 

Gratned I'm not an engine engineer, but recommending not to use a sythetic seems a bit odd. Porsche and M-B both come from the factory with Mobil1 in the oil pan and they run V6 and H6 motors of similear output and displacement.


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