Having been in the automotive industry most of my life and working full-time in the space for over 20 years now, I’ve had the pleasure of meeting and following many master-certified technicians. It may come as a shock, but they tend to believe in a single maintenance secret to getting almost any Honda, Acura, Toyota, or Lexus to run all the way to 300,000 miles…or more. It involves a basic function: the engine oil change.

Case in point: After college, I worked at a local shop in the Midwest for more than a decade. During that time, we often saw Hondas and Toyotas with well over 200,000 miles. Some were closing in on 400,000 miles. Over time, many of these high-mileage vehicles ended up either sold off outside the community or sent to the junkyard due to Ohio salt rust, a car accident, or the customer just getting tired of driving an old vehicle that wasn’t worth much.

The number one “secret” to this near-guaranteed longevity was this: shortened oil change intervals.

It’s not just mechanics I know personally, either. One master Honda and Acura tech, Johnny Pham, who posts under the social handle @acura_technician, says to cut the manufacturer’s recommended oil service interval in half.

I have to say that I’ve heard this inside secret so many times in my career that I forget that not everyone thinks 10,000 miles between oil changes is way too long.

Here’s why a lot of master-level mechanics change their oil more often:

As cars age, they depend on full, clean oil to suspend the byproduct of long-term internal parts use. As such, if you’re only changing your oil once a year, you could inadvertently force your engine to run on damage-inducingly low or dirty oil.

This wears out critical seals and moving components to the point that the engine will start to burn oil, or worse…it’ll eventually start ticking or knocking. Once any of this happens, there’s little you can do to stop the (read: premature) wear from progressing.

At the shop, we’d recommend a 3,000-mile oil change interval for standard-use specs and a 5,000-mile interval for engines requiring full synthetic oil. These days, most modern cars run on partial or full synthetic.

Now, while I recommend that pretty much all used cars requiring oil changes follow this rule of thumb, unfortunately, many makes won’t make it to 300,000 due to problems outside of engine health.

In the end, though, why chance terminating an otherwise perfectly reliable car because of a simple vehicle maintenance interval, like an oil change service?