3,000 miles was back in the bad old days before manufacturing tolerances became much tighter. Remember when people traded their cars in after 20,000 miles, and at 40,000 miles the car was pretty well used up? Newer engines allow far fewer combustion byproducts to get into and contaminate the oil and thus require less frequent changes. My Porsche's recommended change interval was 15,000 miles, but that was a dry sump engine with a 15 quart capacity. With the ShoWagon I compromised with a filter (only) change every 3,000 miles, and oil + filter change at 6,000. With over 200,000 miles on a high performance engine it is still running strong.

Tom Magliozzi (of NPR's Car Talk program) is about four or five years into an oil change experiment with his Dodge Colt Vista. He has not changed oil nor filter in that car for something like 80,000 miles, and only added oil one time after repairing some kind of oil leak. The engine is still running just fine. Kind of makes you wonder about that "...everybody knows you should change your oil every 3,000 miles" urban legend.

Matthew, if your oil pressure light never came on it is unlikely that your engine suffered any damage. It had oil pressure, and the trip was short enough that the diminished supply of oil would not have overheated. Plus, the oil that was in there was fresh and clean, offering good lubrication.

The suggestion that the rattle you heard might have been a [temporarily] collapsed lifter is suspect... That 2.2 liter engine is DOHC (VTEC?) and I don't think it has lifters at all.

I would definitely take Redrum's advice and have it checked by an independent mechanic, document with photos the cause of the oil leak, and have the oil analyzed for excessive metal content. Since the car has just a couple of miles on the fresh oil, there should be virtually no metal in the oil. If there is, you may have problems.

tanstaafl.