So this past weekend I went into Honda with my gf to have the oil changed in her Fit. She got the car back in July and has about 5600kms on it, so we decided to change the oil. But now new Honda products have that oil life/maintance monitor on the cluster...hers was at 50% but we decided to get it changed anyways.

We bring in the car and tell them to do the oil change, minutes later the guy at the desk comes into the waiting room and tells us we don't need an oil change because the oil life monitor is still at 50% and its best to leave the first oil change longer. So we still told them to go ahead with the oil change but Im wondering if Honda is actually using a better oil in their cars or our the relying on this oil life monitor???? Does this oil life thing actually even tells you the actual condition of your oil or is it based on the milage?


Last time I checked Honda was using cheap oil, nothing special that would get you 10000kms

 

I've never been able to get a clear answer on what is in Honda oil. My best educated guess is that it is not quite synthetic. Probably a regular oil base with some special 'secret' detergents. Good oil, but not synthetic. And that only goes for what comes in the car when you buy it, and bottled oil labeled by Honda. Dealerships are authorized to use bulk oil that is not the Honda specific blend. It's usually your basic multi-viscosity cheap oil.

The maintenance-minder system is a pretty neat little device. It does not actually sample your oil or anything like that. It keeps track of mileage/load/rpms/temp to calculate the condition of the oil. It's not merely mileage-based like the old maintenance lights. My personal opinion is that it's geared more towards longer intervals than exceptional maintenance. I don't own a car w/ a maintenance-minder yet, but my suggestion would be to follow the intervals that it suggests doing the oil changes w/ a full synthetic oil.

 

I think the first oil fill might be different from normal Honda oil you'd buy from the parts counter. According to the Fit's manual, you should not do the first oil change before the oil life indicator reaches 15%. Because Honda places importance on this initial oil in the car from the factory, I'm guessing it's related to engine break in. Perhaps the OP should read the car's manual.

As for "normal" oil changes after the first one, the oil life indicator uses a variety of factors such as trip length, engine temperature, and rpm to determine oil life (again according to the manual). I'll trust it rather than simply guessing at an oil change interval.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by yobtah &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">I think the first oil fill might be different from normal Honda oil you'd buy from the parts counter. According to the Fit's manual, you should not do the first oil change before the oil life indicator reaches 15%. Because Honda places importance on this initial oil in the car from the factory, I'm guessing it's related to engine break in. Perhaps the OP should read the car's manual.

As for "normal" oil changes after the first one, the oil life indicator uses a variety of factors such as trip length, engine temperature, and rpm to determine oil life (again according to the manual). I'll trust it rather than simply guessing at an oil change interval. </TD></TR></TABLE>

The original fill of oil in the Fit has a much higher concentration of Moly, and its there for a reason. Let the maintenance minder do its work, and change the oil when it hits 15%. I am running Penziol Platinum 5w20, and once I change it, I'll send it out for a UOA at blackstone labs. That will tell me if the oil is doing its job. If I'm unhappy with the numbers, I might try Castrol Syntec 5w20, although I'm not much of a fan of that Castrol oil. The 0w30 GC is a much better oil, but too thick for our L15A's. Maybe something from M1... We'll see.