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Got your driver's permit? Top 5 things to know about your car.

3. Oil: Change is good

Shawn Pogatchnik/AP/File
Mechanic Tommy Larkin drains oil from a customer's car in his garage in Dublin, Ireland, in this file photo from January. Drivers with cars built after 2002 typically can drive 5,000 miles between oil changes but owners of older models should change it every 3,000 miles.

  • By Ray Cox Contributor

Experts used to recommend an oil change every 3,000 miles, but most of today’s newer cars
 don’t require their oil to be changed that often. Here’s a good rule of thumb – if your car is older than a 2002 model year, you should probably change your oil every 3,000 miles. If it’s newer than a 2002 model, it’s fine to change your oil every 5,000 miles.

So, why is it important to change your oil? Motor oil lubricates, cools, and seals internal engine components. When the engine is running, oil is constantly circulating through critical parts of your car’s motor. That’s why regularly checking and changing motor oil is an important part of overall vehicle maintenance. Neglecting to change the oil periodically will shorten the life of your engine. Many car owners change their own oil. It’s a job that is not as difficult as you might think. It’s a great do-it-yourself auto-repair project and a way to learn a little more about your car. Get a parent or other adult to help you out, consult your vehicle owner’s manual to find out what kind of oil to use.

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Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

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