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I'm about ready to pull the trigger on a 19 Civic ex-l and just read about oil dilution issues' with these engines.
Anyone here heard of this or have this issue. Is it a big concern? I've done some reading and understand it impacts cars more in cold weather climates.
I would assume oil change frequency would help with this issue. I'm one to change mine every 3,000 -5000 miles.
I believe that I understand your concern. Yes, you are correct - colder climates do have more of the effect that you are questioning. Just ensure that upon first start that you allow the engine to warm up sufficiently and you won't have any issues.
I believe that I understand your concern. Yes, you are correct - colder climates do have more of the effect that you are questioning. Just ensure that upon first start that you allow the engine to warm up sufficiently and you won't have any issues.
shipo The '19 models were adjusted for fueling, so this isn't as big a deal. Even on the '16-'18 models you wouldn't have any issue if you allowed the engine to warm before applying any boost. In a DI forced induction vehicle, you are bound to get some fuel absorption in the oil - nature of the beast. Easy: just don't start and go / let the idle settle and the burst of fuel will decrease. As I understand, Honda has provided some ECU flashing to decrease that issue, so no worries at the least.
shipo The '19 models were adjusted for fueling, so this isn't as big a deal. Even on the '16-'18 models you wouldn't have any issue if you allowed the engine to warm before applying any boost. In a DI forced induction vehicle, you are bound to get some fuel absorption in the oil - nature of the beast. Easy: just don't start and go / let the idle settle and the burst of fuel will decrease. As I understand, Honda has provided some ECU flashing to decrease that issue, so no worries at the least.
Nope, not that simple. First off, "avoiding any boost" is almost unavoidable, second, start and go is the best for engines, the 1.5 included, because it avoids too much idle time which, in and of itself will lead to fuel dilution of the oil. Yes, Honda has provided a flash, however, the jury is still out on whether the fix has actually provided any relief.
The fact is, unless these cars are driven for durations long enough allow the fuel to vaporize out of the oil at least a couple of times per week, then there will be fuel dilution.
shipo The '19 models were adjusted for fueling, so this isn't as big a deal. Even on the '16-'18 models you wouldn't have any issue if you allowed the engine to warm before applying any boost. In a DI forced induction vehicle, you are bound to get some fuel absorption in the oil - nature of the beast. Easy: just don't start and go / let the idle settle and the burst of fuel will decrease. As I understand, Honda has provided some ECU flashing to decrease that issue, so no worries at the least.
I hope this is the case. I bought the 19 two weeks ago. When I asked the salesman about the oil dilution issue he said if the issue impacted earlier years it would have been corrected for the 2019's. We will see. I will keep an eye on my oil level as we tend to make a lot fo short trips living in the city.
I hope this is the case. I bought the 19 two weeks ago. When I asked the salesman about the oil dilution issue he said if the issue impacted earlier years it would have been corrected for the 2019's. We will see. I will keep an eye on my oil level as we tend to make a lot fo short trips living in the city.
PRL will be coming out with quite a different approach to "catch cans" soon. As to WHEN is unknown at this time. However, they first posted their development of it in Nov'18 and I am hopeful that it gets released in the next few months.
Last edited by tech8; 02-01-2019 at 01:36 PM.
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PRL will be coming out with quite a different approach to "catch cans" soon. As to WHEN is unknown at this time. However, they first posted their development of it in Nov'18 and I am hopeful that it gets released in the next few months.
Are you somehow suggesting a catch-can will be able to remediate fuel diluted oil?
Nope, not that simple. First off, "avoiding any boost" is almost unavoidable, second, start and go is the best for engines, the 1.5 included, because it avoids too much idle time which, in and of itself will lead to fuel dilution of the oil. Yes, Honda has provided a flash, however, the jury is still out on whether the fix has actually provided any relief.
The fact is, unless these cars are driven for durations long enough allow the fuel to vaporize out of the oil at least a couple of times per week, then there will be fuel dilution.
we just purchased a used 17 ex-t. For the Honda flash, is this a recall we can look up to see if it was done or a bulletin we need to request to have done? I don’t drive the vehicle as it’s my girlfriends car but working for Audi I’m no stranger to the turbocharged engine. It’s ideal to not boost if you can help it till the oil temp gets a little warm atleast for the turbos sake. Audi gets the fuel dilution issues too but mainly when an injector or high pressure fuel pump goes bad and we can verify this in the rich fuel trim values but not so much an issue otherwise.
The fuel dilution problem is not solved by letting your Honda 1.5l turbo warm up. And, it's not a cold weather short trip issue. I have had my oil from my 2018 CR-V Ex tested 3 times and the fuel dilution is quite severe. And, there is also considerable water in the oil. (No, it is not coolant.)
Honda has an update which they applied to the vehicle. Now, it doesn't warm up like it used to. It starts to get to operating temperature and the temp goes down almost all the way and stays down for about 5-7 minutes. I do not know what they thought the fix was fixing. You can't let your 1.5 with the fix warm up. It never warms up idling. In fact, when you pull up to a stoplight, you watch the engine temp drop. I ain't making any of this up.
The fuel dilution problem is not solved by letting your Honda 1.5l turbo warm up. And, it's not a cold weather short trip issue. I have had my oil from my 2018 CR-V Ex tested 3 times and the fuel dilution is quite severe. And, there is also considerable water in the oil. (No, it is not coolant.)
Honda has an update which they applied to the vehicle. Now, it doesn't warm up like it used to. It starts to get to operating temperature and the temp goes down almost all the way and stays down for about 5-7 minutes. I do not know what they thought the fix was fixing. You can't let your 1.5 with the fix warm up. It never warms up idling. In fact, when you pull up to a stoplight, you watch the engine temp drop. I ain't making any of this up.
yeah some engines have so much water in their oil that it can freeze in cold climates and you get a low oil pressure signal on start up. I have the programming change done a couple weeks back, honestly I'm not putting much faith into this as being the solution. The dealer told me they were updating the a/c module programming, and I thought what the hell is that going to do for fuel dilution issues. Maybe I am a bit too skeptical about the fix. I think within the next couple of weeks I may be driving a 19 Subaru WRX in place of my Civic, they had fuel dilution issues very early on in their DIT development but it seems to have been resolved and I don't hear of many complaints on their 2.0 L turbos now. Subaru is switching to dual injector designs on some of their boxer engines right now but not yet on my 19 WRX. At least they run 5w30 oil , so they should have a bit more margin of safety if the oil does get diluted, and they tend to run shorter oil change intervals compared to Hondas.
This is going to end up being like the V6 ECO issues. Honda's fix right now is a stupid reflash which will effective do nothing, then when no one is buying the reflash scam(to keep from fixing their F*** up) they'll offer some sort of physical part that can be replaced to fix it... after everyone stops tolerating that, a class action suit will ensue and Honda will agree to repair the real cause but use as few resources as possible to notify all of the owners of the affected vehicles.
I think you are right, unfortunately. There are 1.5l turbo owners who are concerned as heck about their engines and those who thing it's the "other guys" that have problems. they just haven't realized that we're all dealing with it. Since Honda reflashed my engine something odd is going on. The engine does not warm up the same. It gets to a certain point and starts to cool down. It recovers, starts going up, and then it cools down again. On the way home in 32F weather there was little heat available for heating the car. And, when I am at a stop light, the engine didn't heat up. At all. I will post a graph.
I don't think Honda has figured out how to solve this yet. They created a small displacment engine with turbo that runs on 87 octane. Obviously something isn't solved yet. What drives me nuts is they are telling the publi that no heat and extreme fuel dilution and water in the oil is "normal". It's patently false. By the way, my water was over 1300 ppm.
Engine was really slow to warm up on way home. Trying to understand why the engine stops warming up, why Honda is intentionally cooling the engine down. Don't think it's the thermostat because I believe it's purely mechanical.
I was under the impression that they wanted the car to warm up faster, but hearing reports of it running cooler now. I can't really tell what my 16 EX touring is doing after the reflash, if it warms up faster or runs colder.
I know they need to run it leaner so it doesn't dump as much fuel at low rpms, maybe they need to run it cooler to reduce low speed preignition with leaner air fuel mixtures coupled with 87 octane fuel.
It was always my impression that a vehicle manufacturer that employs all of the so called genius engineers would conduct thorough reliability runs of their engines in all varied conditions. Like taking an engine and putting 500k miles on it and then taking it apart and analyzing wear patterns, fuel economy, oil degradation etc. So what have these brilliant minds been doing this whole time ? If some dumb bloke like myself can visually see my oil levels growing with each drive, and able to see my oil going dirt black a couple weeks after being changed why can't they see that with all of their fancy testing tools and procedures ? They need a shake-up over there, it is plain as day that someone or some group dropped the ball on this. Honda spend less time blowing up F1 engines and start focusing on how to build proper motors for us common folk.
It was always my impression that a vehicle manufacturer that employs all of the so called genius engineers would conduct thorough reliability runs of their engines in all varied conditions. Like taking an engine and putting 500k miles on it and then taking it apart and analyzing wear patterns, fuel economy, oil degradation etc. So what have these brilliant minds been doing this whole time ? If some dumb bloke like myself can visually see my oil levels growing with each drive, and able to see my oil going dirt black a couple weeks after being changed why can't they see that with all of their fancy testing tools and procedures ? They need a shake-up over there, it is plain as day that someone or some group dropped the ball on this. Honda spend less time blowing up F1 engines and start focusing on how to build proper motors for us common folk.
One of the things I've seen manufacturers do is apply very rigorous testing in simulated high heat/high load environments on a dynamometer and "assume" if an engine can withstand such a test, everything else is good. The flaw in that testing model is it doesn't catch short duration drives in cold weather where the engine never warms up.
01-07-2019, 11:58 AM
Oil dilution problem in 1.5 turbo engines
