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My 07 doesn’t get much driving. My current mileage is just under 30k. According to the owner’s manual it says if the service indicator hasn’t reached 10% in 12 months, change the oil otherwise change the oil when 10% is reached. I’ve been following this rule, what does everyone think about that. So I only change oil once a year unless I get to 10% before 12 months are up.
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You will probably get varied opinions on this question. I have a 09 Honda Fit that is driven about 11K/year. I change my oil twice a year just to be on the safe side. My oil life meter never goes below 40%. I just don’t personally rely to much on that meter as an accurate gage of oil life.
Here is a good website regarding all fluids automotive –
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ub … p?ubb=cfrm
I would say you’re doing it exactly the way your suppose to. Newer engines and oils just don’t need the oil change interval that we used to go by and I hate to say this but the oil change is the best opportunity for an ‘upsell’ so many times it gets done early and a savvy tech will keep an open eye for other work while performing the LOF and hopefully go by it honestly. I would say stick by what you’re doing and you should be fine.
Just get a Used Oil Analysis performed to see if the Total Base Number of the oil, viscosity, ‘wear metals’, and contaminants are within tolerance(BITOG is a great place to get your UOA reviewed once you receive the results, scan>upload to image hosting site>post to BITOG or here I can give some decent advice lol)…
It depends a lot on what the lube is you are using, what the ‘actual’ mileage is in the year even if the OLM % isn’t reached what sort of mileage ARE you doing? If say…less than 5,000 miles. I’d change it twice a year with conventional. 6 months, mid-tier oil filter. Use name brand oil and you can’t go wrong really. It’s only when you extend the OCI by miles that synthetic can become a need in some apps to do it safely. It can vary by engine(is it hard on oil to begin with or not?), conditions seen(short trips most? lots of idling? extreme temps?), and the unknown values of contaminants. Some apps can go 1 year on dino/conventional with low mileage. Also, not driving a vehicle a lot will increase the wear metals seen in a used fluid analysis, for many reasons I will not go into in this post but happy to answer if anyone is curious.
First, figure out if the lube/current regimen is working or not. Then determine what could be done differently to improve numbers or if what you are doing currently is even working well at all.
Oil will generally lose some viscosity over time(use) and then start to thicken up due to oxidation. You want to have enough TBN remaining in the oil by the time you change it so that the oil had ‘active additive’ left to neutralize the buildup of any harmful acids(some acids in engine oils are actually from group IV/V additives PAO and ester, so it’s really a non-corrosive acid) .Therefore, a TAN or Total Acidic Number is not as useful to Passenger car apps while on the other hand TBN always seems to last in diesels for the most part(diesel oils etc) but TAN needs to be monitored as a sort of baseline check to determine if holding off on LOF is a go in that area then you check the others with a UOA. If you get a good idea of what the UOA ‘should’ look like and what yours does, then you can safely ‘settle’ in to a regimen with peace of mind.
Some Honda’s are harder on oil that others, most 4 cylinder Honda’s are great candidates for ‘extended’ OCIs, whilst a few models have had issues with varnishing/vtec codes from extending to 5,000 even on synthetic due to PCV design flaws according to a few guys on BITOG. Someone there had an 05 Odyssey V6 that started sludging up(several threads related to that can be found google 05 Odyssey BITOG and you’ll see.)
Anyway, it’d probably be alright if ‘when’ driven it gets on the highway/interstate or at least not short trip/stop ‘n go only. That would probably be a bad idea particularly on dino/conventional.
If you want more information, please ask myself or others on the BITOG site. I’ve been reading most every day there for about 2 years. Got a lot to share. lol
If you get one of the anywhere from $15-$45 Used Oil Analysis performed, then you can check off contaminants; like coolant/good air and oil filtration(related to silicon values and insoluble numbers respectively), having adequate TBN at the end of the oil’s service in your engine, amongst other things such as fuel dilution, wear metals vs universal averages for your engine, and the oil holding within ‘grade’ or going out of spec the relative correlation to anything negative resulting from such…the list can get somewhat cluttered but it’s straight forward once you wrap your mind around it.
If anyone wants clarity from what I posted please ask. Also, diesels seem to go by soot values and TAN numbers rather than TBN as their oils are formulated differently and diesel engines have different check lists regarding their lube, so a TAN isn’t necessary for a PCMO(Passenger Car(or truck) Motor Oil) ran on petro/gasoline. That was the point of bringing that up originally.
Cheers.
Bro, I’m learning something from ya all the time from your vids. Gotta give back at times! Two-way street relationships are healthier! T)
By the way, the issues with the 05 Odyssey threads on the BITOG site if you want check it out, the last is the ‘resolved’ one:
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=147911&Number=2160501#Post2160501
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=148037&Number=2162573#Post2162573
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=148303&Number=2166571#Post2166571
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Main=148617&Number=2170735#Post2170735
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