Regular maintenance and oil filter question

[Anonymous]

Hey all,
This is a dumb question, but what are your regular maintenace schedules for a 200ci? I've maintaned a newer Chevy truck before, but the newer automobiles have different maintenance times. The tranny fluid was changed about 2K miles ago (3spd manual). New shocks were installed and greased (how often should I grease those and with what?). What else should I grease (pitman arm? other steering components?) I'm guessing the air filter should be changed at every oil change (every 3k miles, faithfully). When should the rear axel fluid be changed? When I got my new one installed (about 2k miles ago, from a 69 or 70 cougar) the guy filled it up. Spark plugs? I'm guessing every 30k - 50k miles? About the oil filter, I've heard you can use a Motorcraft FL-299. Would you have to have a larger oil pan to take advantage of it (IE would their be enough oil in the pan to fill up the extra space the FL-299 has?)? Right now I use the FL-1A, but the summer here is very hot, and any more cooling I can get is better. Thanks for reading...I know it's such a newb post but I had to ask it!
Erik

 

[67 Falcon]

The Motorcraft FL299 holds 1 quart of oil, so now you can run 5 full quarts. I try to change oil and fliter every 3000 miles, grease every thing that has fittings. Russell

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks. How often should you change the tranny and rear axel fluid? Not too often correct?

 

[LaGrasta]

Oil can go easily to 5000 miles. 3000 is a marketing ploy. If you decide to use synthetic, you can go even longer. Change the oil filter every other oil change.
Air filter, when dirty (check it often because it's easy to do so) or proably every 25,000.
Tranny can go about 25,000 miles.
Rear end, drain, entirely, fill it iwth synthetic and weld it shut.
grease anything with a nipple, including the u-joints. As far as greasing the shocks, I don't know what you're talking about.
Spark plugs, I'd guess at about 25,000 too. Again, they are cheap and easy to do. In spite of how clean they look when you remove, you'll be amazed at how much better an engine runs with new ones.
I'd change the fuel filter at 25,000 too. That's proablyu early, but in teh amount of miles you'll drive this car, that's proably only going ot be one change and it onlyt cost like $3.00
Godd luck, have fiun and enjoy the tinkering that goes along with an old car. It's a lot of the fun.

 

[CobraSix]

I changed the rear end fluid in my truck and 99 mustang at 100k miles or so. Seems to be a good time. The tranny fluid, if automatic, every 50k. If manual, I'll drain and replace every 100k miles.

I do plugs every 25-30k.

Air filter, every 10-15k

Oil filter, every oil change (I won't save much for waiting every other).

Oil, every 5k miles.

Fuel filter, every 2 years (about 20-25k miles).

Wires, cap and rotor: every 50-60k miles.

I think that about covers my car...I have no PS or AC, so I don't worry about those.

Slade

 

[Kstang]

Speaking of the Fl-299, as mentioned above, i took a trip to autozoo today and they didn't have any in stock and they looked it up on their all powerful computer(insert bow) and after a little bit of debate over the issue of it fitting my engine, they finaly told me the price. She said that it would cost me 94 bucks for an oil filter? Is this a correct price or is there something wrong ?

kevin

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks all,
It's nice to know what everybody does at certain milages. Kstang..I found one at O'Reilly Auto Parts, never check Autozone...

 

[addo]

USD$94 for an oil filter? Must be a box of a dozen.

 

[Anonymous]

I am a great believer in preventative maintaince (PM) but the "when" question is open to individual tast such as what are the conditions that you drive in and how much driving do you do. When you read that PM should be done at a certain time are they just trying to sell more product??

On my daily drivers I change oil & filter & lube by the calendar not by miles. Every four months. For hobby cars that go less than 2Kmi per year, once per year.

There was a study done on oil filters a while back where oil filters were disassembled and compared and it was on the web http://www.frankhunt.com/FRANK/corvette ... ml#mc-fl1a. In short what I got out of the study was that Fram and Pennzoil filters were junk and Wix is a good one. Wix makes filters for NAPA so that is the one that I have settled on. According to the study there is no difference between NAPA Gold and NAPA Silver so there is some added savings there (this applies to air filters too).

There are other good filters but NAPA is easy to come by so thats where I go. I did some filter disassembly myself and gave a talk on the subject to our local car club. Will your engine last forever if you use a Wix filter? Not likely. But if you know that the quality is bad on some products then why use them.

 

[CobraSix]

Dick,

I've read that study before. Very interesting. I've been using Napa SIlver for a while. Now I feel justified. The only car I don't use Napa on is my Volvo. They have a special filter design with it's check valve that most other filters don't. It's not the same as other check valves. For my Volvo, I use a Volvo filter on everything. Fuel, Air, Oil, ventilation.

If any of my cars drove less then 3k miles a year, I would change once a year. Otherwise, for me, 3-5kmiles on my Volvo is about 1 month of driving in the winter. During the summer, that's 1 month of driving on my 65. So I go by miles. Our 99 goes by calender, because it only gets about 5k miles a year. So I change in the winter and in the summer.

Slade

 

[Falcon62]

And one of the other better rated filters is the Motorcraft FL-1A (essentially a rebadged Purolator Pure One) which I can buy for less than $3 any day of the week. I only use Motorcraft, Purolator, or Wix, in that order.