If an engine burns enough oil and must have it replaced, there is no need to 'change' the oil--it's being changed all the time. It's called 'make-up' oil. Caterpillar truck engines had a table in their operations manuals that showed how much the normal oil change interval could be extended depending upon how many gallons of 'make-up' oil is added between changes.
That's the only way I know that the oil change interval could be extended to infinity--have the engine consume a lot of oil.
Sure that was Caterpillar and not Detroit? I drove Cat powered Class 8 Stars for over 30 years hauling steel and machinery and hardly ever added crankcase oil between changes. Now, Roadway Express used to meter a set amount of crankcase oil into the fuel tanks as the engines ran and then added make up oil as needed. That way, they never changed the lube oil, just kept adding.
I read the caveat on the Briggs website..'just add oil as needed' without changing it. Sounds to me like they plan on enough lube oil getting by the rings that there will be no need to ever change it.
Years ago, I had an Ariens Rocket rear tine tiller with a Tecumseh HH mosquito chaser that I ran for many years and never changed the oil, I just added as needed. Guess Tecumseh engines were ahead of their time....:laughing:
I suspect problems will arise when owners never check the oil level but then I would suspect the motors have a low oil shutdown feature. Some of the posts I read on here leads me ti suspect just that... Don't know where the dipstick is besides running the equipment....lol