One mechanic is about to change the oil on his new customer’s Ford when he takes a closer look at a sticker on the windshield. With nearly 20,000 miles between oil changes, is this Ford a ticking time bomb, or is it a simple case of a forgetful technician?
TikTok user Rotor Lathe (@rotor.lathe) posted his discovery on Thursday. In the video, he revealed a new customer who brought their car in for an oil change. “Oil change sticker says 12/19/23 at 16,000, roughly,” he said. “And we’ve got 35,013 miles on this car. I can only imagine what this oil is going to look like.”
Clearly, Lathe intended the video as a sincere PSA, but the internet pointed out another possibility (as it always does).
“Hear me out,” wrote one viewer. “Could it be possible that the customer has had their oil changed but nobody put a sticker on it?”
Someone else noted the cliffhanger with sarcasm. “I love the part where you show us the oil,” they wrote.
“They could have done [the oil change] themselves in between,” suggested another person.
“Just bought a ’93 Blazer and the sticker says ’08… Still has a few hundred miles to go,” wrote someone else.
Let’s take the sticker at face value and assume that the Ford’s owner drove the car without an oil change for approximately 19,000 miles. If you accept AAA’s general advice and change your oil every 3,000-5,000 miles, it means this car owner might’ve skipped out on three or four oil changes.
According to the folks on this Reddit thread posted to r/cars three years ago, it’s high up there.
The original poster said they drove 17,000 miles in a 1986 Honda CRX Si. “Drove 45,000 miles a year 95 percent on the highway, so at least the miles were easy…” the Redditor wrote.
In the comments, a user wrote, “There’s a guy on the Civicx forum right now who went 20,000 miles on his tuned Si, without an oil change. His engine is [ruined] and he’s getting cooked by the members lol.”
Someone else wrote, “25,000 miles. My fault, but only because I didn’t know any better. I knew it needed maintenance, but didn’t know anything about it. It wasn’t until I got my first oil change and looked at the little sticker in the corner of the window that showed ‘next change in 3,000 miles.’ Oops.”
Motor1 reached out to Lathe via TikTok for comment. It reached out to Ford via email. They responded with sound advice. The Ford representative said, “Customers should read their owner’s manual for information about maintenance intervals.”