Gidday SMY
A warm
to the ORS forum, mate.
I serviced Roo1 ('93 Impreza) when I remembered. The two major services at 100 & 200 K Kms were done at the right miles, but not at the right time ...
When I traded it in on Roo2, Roo1 had 234,000 kms on the clock and was nearly 18 y.o. During a trip from Melbourne to Brisbane and back just before trading it in (3 weeks before) the ambient temperatures were mostly 35° to 45°C, so ran the air con for almost all the 4,000+ kms. It used no oil and no water in the whole trip. Sitting on around 120~130 km/h mostly.
It had been filled with mineral oil (10W-40) all its life. I hadn't changed the plugs for around 100,000 kms (normal plugs, not Iridium or Platinum ... ). It still worked fine. Ran out of go at around 165 km/h on the Brissy trip. When (relatively) new it would pull 175 km/h ...
It had no major repairs since new. Air con repair and re-gas, rear tail pipe and the normal stuff like brake pads, wipers, bulbs, tyres, couple of CV joints.
When I first got Roo2, I had it serviced and filled with Shell Helix Ultra 5W-40 fully synthetic oil. When it had its next service 24 months and 10,000 kms later, the oil was still orange, and felt OK to the touch. It had used no oil or water in that time. If I had used mineral oil, I would have had to change it 4 times over that period. With FS, not a problem.
In short, the 12,500 km service intervals are fine except for the most tortuous driving conditions, IME&O. Use FS oil in it. And bugger the Owner's Manual "recommended oil" (0W-20!!!!!), never use less than a 5W-40 FS oil in Oz.
