This is all terribly interesting to me given an experience I had this Spring. I changed the oil in my 2004 3.0 for ~99,000 miles across 7 years. I started at every 3k miles and eventually to 5k. That's probably better than 25 times.

I never saw this.

I've also changed the oil on my wife's '02 330 (same M54- filter anyway) for about the same 92k miles across 12 years.

I never saw it there, either.

And then, there's the M62 in my E39. 14 years and (only) 57k miles. Once again, never saw it.

So imagine my surprise (and genuine wonder) almost 4 years ago when I discovered that the N62 in my '04 4.8is requires me to crawl under the silly car for the filter change. I never have liked that and I still don't understand it.

I've changed it about every 5k miles. It's just shy of a big 6-0k miles. Before I went on my big, 6k mile trip, I was at the Indy for a pre-trip checkup, and I had some oil for my next at home change. They asked if I wanted to change it, they'd use my oil and charge me for the filter I had yet to buy. Can't beat that, so I let 'em do it.

Hey, look at this, the kid said.

It was not only crushed, it was nearly ripped in half! Now, I do *not* know if that was from the removal or what, but I had never, not ever seen THAT. I had used the Fram oil filter I had gotten 'free' when I purchased Castrol Syntec at the auto parts store.

I decided right then that I would not use any more of the 3 or 4 FRAM filters I had. But now I wonder....

Was something stuck up in there? Hrmmmmm...

My last oil change was this Summer in Boise, Idaho after running my X5 along some really dusty Colorado mountain 'roads'. I've since driven home across country and am just right at 60k miles.

This thread makes me want to go out, check the filter, and do an oil change as the first step in my big 60k miles preventative maintenance-a-palooza.

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