Sorry if this is the wrong forum, but I figured since a lot of knowledgeable guys frequent this section, I'd post up here.

When I bought my G sedan in Apr, I was living in a suburb/rural area, had a short commute to work, but had to drive for everything, and I took lots of weekend road trips...put about 5k mi on the car from Apr-July (loved every mile)

Since July, I relocated to DC for work, and I settled in VA right outside the city, where I can walk to the metro station and take the train to work every day. Since I'm close to the metro, most areas of interest are accessible without using a car. Basically, my car sits in the garage for 6 days a week. The 7th day, I usually take it for a run to a grocery store about 6 miles away (look forward to grocery shopping way more than I should), so I can run it for a bit and reach highway speeds. The main source of mileage will be trips back home to NY (about 600mi round trip) for holidays, I figure I'll be putting about 4-5k mi/yr total

Is there anything I should be cognizant of or anything special I should do due to the change in driving habits? I was about to convert over to synthetic oil, should this have any bearing on the decision?

FWIW I'm planning to keep it for a while (as manuals get more and more scarce and sedans less sporty and "raw")

Any input is much appreciated

Random (horribly quality) photo

 

No. Nothing different at all. Enjoy.

 

If you're really only driving it once a week, I would go start it and let it run for 5 minutes or so to keep a good charge on the battery. other than that, ensure you change the oil once a year if you're only doing 5k max per year. Twice if you really want to be OCD about it.

 

If you're driving the car once a week and letting it get up to temp, you're fine, with exception to the aforementioned battery charging issue. That's something you should research. The worse scenario is that you plug in a battery charger every now and then. Off to Google with you, OP!

And in case you didn't already know, I relate to this a whole lot, STownSaint. I work at home, and sometimes 3 or 4 days slip by while the car just sits in the garage. More often than otherwise, we take the wife's car out as a family, because the kids aren't allowed to be kids in my back seat. Fortunately, my long term ownership plans dovetail nicely into maintaining a low-mileage car; (both on the odometer and in the gas tank.)

 

I'm in a similar situation and my goal is to essentially keep the car for another 9 years and trade/sell with right around 100k miles. At this rate, it will still smell new inside since I work just 3 miles away from home and fly when I need to travel. The only thing we may want to consider is changing the oil a little on the early side since it will take nearly 6 months to reach the recommended change interval.

 

You could go Synthetic. Assuming low mileage, change the oil once a year.

 

Thanks for the replies

Still getting over not driving it much, sorry if I was venting too much in the OP! At least I hit the road for NY today

 

Better hurry up. 12" of snow is coming to Upstate this evening.

Just drove my car on errands this afternoon before the snow, first time in 3 days. Loved every second of it. Never even turned on the radio.

 

My car sits 5-6 days of the week as well since I travel for work every week and sometimes it will sit for 2-3 weeks at a time. I've just checked the oil, tire pressure and the usual stuff and it has been fine. I will probably change my oil every 6 months even though it is probably overkill with the Penzoil Ultra.

 

^ good point. i also travel frequently for work and use the wife's SUV for weekend hauling etc. so my car often gets driven only 2-3 days per week. or ~5k miles/year. i converted to Pennzoil Platinum (from Mobil 1) a few years ago and never exceed about 6 months of use per change. i am way under on mileage, but i account for the time as my limiting factor. living in an area where the climate varies seasonally, this tends to impact the oil sitting in the crankcase.

i'm not sure if i read about this on Bob Is The Oil Guy, but i have seen information to support elapsed-time and seasonal changes as a factor in oil degradation. i can buy into that logic so i follow the 6 month rule independent of mileage. i suppose this is the same logic for why oil has a shelf life. you can't buy a huge supply on sale and expect everything is kosher 10 years later...

asides from regular fluid changes, doing the other PM-checks and tire pressures is always a good idea. try to get the car on a good highway drive to heat everything up regularly as well. for me that works out to every ~2 weeks to pick up stuff from the US shipping depots just across the border. cheap US parts, cheap US gas, good clean CDN fun - in a US-imported G37.

 

one thing to do (if not done already) is notify insurance that car is being driven less than 5K miles per year....it should yield you a discount as a pleasure vehicle
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Heading to LI so hopefully won't turn to snow (for my sake, still on OEM tires )

Any reason for this? Just curious, my next oil change will be the one that converts to synthetic