About Oil & Miles

What this is

Oil & Miles publishes four kinds of thing: repair cost breakdowns, guides to engine oil and other fluids, used-car buying advice organized by model and year, and symptom-to-cause diagnostics. All of it is written for the person paying the bill rather than the person writing it.

There are no press cars here, no launch events, and no relationship with any manufacturer or dealer group.

Where it comes from

The site is run out of an independent oil and parts business. That's an unusual place to write about American and European cars from — and it turns out to be the more useful place.

Motoring writers drive cars for a week and hand them back. We spend the week pricing the parts that failed on them. Which components come back broken, at what mileage, on which engines, and what the owner ends up paying — that's a different picture from a specification sheet, and it's the one you're actually shopping for when something goes wrong.

Fluids, filters, brakes, batteries and belts don't care which country they're in. A Toyota 2ZR-FE behaves the same everywhere. Matching an oil specification to an engine, and knowing which parts have a reputation for coming straight back, is daily work here rather than research.

And where the counter runs out, we say so. Recall coverage, warranty extensions, regional labor rates, dealer pricing — those are market-specific, and every article that leans on one tells you which document it came from. You'll see the phrase “published information” on this site more than once. It's there so you always know whether you're reading something we've handled or something we've read.

That's the deal. Everything here is one or the other, and it's always labeled.

How articles are put together

• Prices are ranges, and they're dated. A single number would be easier to read and would be wrong for almost everyone. Ranges are drawn from parts pricing, published labor times and shop rates, and they carry the month they were compiled.
• Mechanical claims are checked against the manufacturer. Where a service manual, technical service bulletin or approval list exists, that's what we follow — not a forum thread.
• Uncertainty is stated. If something depends on your engine, your mileage or your climate, the article says so instead of smoothing it into a confident sentence.
• Every article is reviewed by a named person before it goes up. See who writes this.

Corrections

If something here is wrong, tell us and it gets fixed. Substantive corrections are noted on the article itself along with the date, rather than quietly edited away. Contact us.

How the site makes money

Two ways, and both are visible:

• Display advertising. Ad slots are marked as advertisements. We don't control which specific ads appear.
• Sponsored placements and affiliate links, where they exist, are labelled as such on the page they appear on.

What doesn't happen: no advertiser gets to change a verdict, remove a criticism, or see an article before it's published. If that ever becomes a condition of a deal, the deal doesn't happen. Brands that want to work with us can read the terms on the advertising page.

What we aren't

We aren't a substitute for a mechanic looking at your specific car, and nothing here is a professional inspection. Please read the disclaimer — especially before doing anything to a braking or fuel system yourself.