I recently purchased a 2006 Honda Accord, and it’s been 3000 miles since I bought it. (they gave fresh oil at the dealer). The oil life indicator, which is supposed to calculate the oil life based on engine use, says it still has 50 to 60 percent of oil life left.
The mileage is 99 percent highway miles (I have a longish commute to work), so I think, with my admittedly limited car knowledge, it’s reasonable that the oil might last considerably longer than 3000 miles if they are mostly highway miles. Is this thinking sound?
Pretty much so.
The handbook should give you the oil change interval I had mine done on purchase then after 2,000 miles - it was in for a minor repair and checkup so I had it serviced. When I looked in the book it was 12,500 miles and the dashboard computer agrees with this. Servicing more often never does any harm though.
3000 miles between changes is what your dad learned back in the 60’s, and what Jiffy Lube wants you to believe still applies.
It doesn’t.
Modern cars generally get far more life out of oil than they did in the past. Oil filters are better, engines are better machined, it’s nothing like the old days when you needed to check the oil at every fill up.
There is only one good source for determining the appropriate intervals for maintenance, the car manufacturer. Read the manual carefully, and do what it says. Take special note of “severe” vs. “normal” driving, more people fall into severe than you would expect, it’s not about off-roading, it’s about sitting in traffic jams.
First, let go of the idea that a 3,000 mile interval has some meaning for your car. It’s 20+ years out of date. Apparently a number of quick-lube places (and other repair facilities) haven’t let go of the notion, but for the great majority of cars on the road today it’s a significantly shorter interval than called for by the manufacturer.
The normal oil change service interval for your car is 10,000 miles. Your driving pattern qualifies for this. For severe service (typically city driving) the interval is 5,000 miles. As you can imagine, these are somewhat arbitrary figures based on common use patterns and rounded off to round figures. The oil life indicator system takes more info specific to your actual use and calculates a time for service that better applies to your individual situation. There’s no reason I know of to question it.
SATURN has an oil life monitor which uses an algorithm (miles, engine speed) to determine end of life. CADILLAC has a real oil life senor 9it measures the acidity of the oil). On my SATURN, for mostly highway, the sensor clicked on at about 9000 miles-is this within modern oil life?
'06 Accords, among many other contemporary Hondas, have no printed maintenance schedule.* You can pore over the owner’s manual as carefully as you want; you will not find one. (We have just such a car, and I have carried out this exercise.) I also have a factory service manual; same deal. My FSM does, though, have a traditional miles/months schedule for the 2005 and prior years that it also covers; 2006 was apparently the first year they got away from that.
Their entire “maintenance schedule” consists of following the advice of the dashboard Maintenance Minder, which groups maintenance items into several categories and pops up numbers and letters to indicate what it feels is due. The manual has a couple of caveats like changing air filters extra often in dusty environments, and oil after (I think) a year in the car regardless of the MM’s advice - basically “catches” for unusual driving patterns or conditions that the MM algorithm has no way of detecting on its own.
Our '06 Accord’s MM has been pretty linear over the time we’ve owned it, on course to hit 0% at about 6,500 miles every OCI doing quite a bit of in-town driving. I usually start preparing to do whatever is recommended when the green wrench lights up on the dash, which happens at 15% oil life left - so far we’ve averaged actual oil change intervals of about 5,400 miles.
Within a month or so the usage of this car will switch to a far longer highway commute. I’m curious to see how this affects the oil change recommendations. (I’m expecting them to get longer, and I intend to continue changing at about 15% left just as a peace-of-mind cushion.)
By which I mean “Change the oil every X,XXX miles or Y months,” and so on down the list of preventive maintenance activities.
Our 04 or 05 Honda Odyssey also does not have a printed schedule anywhere, as brad_d points out. One thing we found amusing/discouraging is that when we brought it to the Honda dealer for the recommended maintenance it popped up at 30K (mostly just inspecting a bunch of things in addition to the oil change), the dealer had their own recommended 30k checkup, which cost about twice as much as doing the computer recommended items. When my wife asked about the discrepancy, the dealer told her it was because the Odyssey wasn’t designed for the harsh New England climate (!), so it required a lot more preventive maintenance. We stuck with the computer recommended items, and won’t be going to that dealer again.
Wow… not having printed forewarnings would seriously upset me. I like to plan for these things myself! The GM oil change indicators were always great in that they mentioned a percentage; but to have something just pop up all of a sudden?
Also, how do you make a purchasing decision without having any idea what the maintenance schedule will be?
Interesting. My repair info had a typical schedule, which I referred to for my post above. This info is compiled from factory information, to where many of the entries are clearly and obviously reprints from factory publications, but some of it is reformatted by my info provider.
I dug a little deeper into the indicator-based maintenance section. It said if there’s any confusion about when to perform certain services, to follow the indicator over the schedule. I also saw that some items have default intervals, for example it said to change the oil at least once a year regardless of the indicator (this from a reprint of Honda information).
The oil change indicator on the Odyssey does have a percentage left, not just a popup. The other items came up as “perform soon” or something like that.
Color, cupholders, power doors & liftback, ease of getting kids into & out of the van? It’s my wife’s car
The Honda MM does keep you updated on how much oil life you have left (if you care). At any time you can cycle through the various displays on the dash (just the Trip A and Trip B odo’s) to get to percentage left on the Maintenance Minder. I write this number down, along with mileage, each gas fillup so my Excel spreadsheet gives me a very accurate estimate of when I’ll be hitting X% left.
With some more effort you can also “peek ahead” to see what other services it’ll be asking for. Basically, if you go halfway through the “reset” procedure that you perform after an oil change, it will tell you what other services it feels you should do right now. This helps me plan, and also allows you to do an oil change well in advance of 15% left for whatever reason without being totally in the dark on the longer-period stuff. (It begins flashing service items in your face at 15% left.)
This has occurred to me, but I ultimately decided that the maintenance schedule was very unlikely to vary from “normal” by enough to significantly alter my decision-making. Most vehicles these days seem to have relatively similar schedules - varying in detail, sure, but not by enough to make a real difference to me. The actual numbers in the maintenance schedule never got much more than a cursory glance looking for absurd things from me before (if I looked at them at all) before purchase, so this isn’t much of a change.
Yup, I had a 2006 Civic. It was the first year for the new body/engine and the first year with no maintenance schedule, just the computer. I looked EVERYWHERE for a schedule, it made me very nervous not to have one! You get used to it.
IIRC, I think I was getting close to 10K per oil change with mostly highway miles, but I could be wrong.
It looks like my 2008 will be a little lower. If it keeps on at the current rate, I’ll be due a change at around 8K.
Being the procrastinator I am, I generally do the change at 5%. The dealer, of course, schedules for 3K/3mo. And has the double-your-charges list of “things you should really pay us for, just because” every time you go in. Gah, I hate that crap.
I think I got 1000-1500 miles in between the wrench turning on and 5%, which made me feel better. I also got used to checking the percentage. When I first started driving it, I was very worried that I’d end up needing an emergency oil change while on vacation because the light came on, but now I just check the percentage every so often.
brad_d, you lost me on how to check for “upcoming” maintenance. Can you give a step-by-step?
Sure. If you look in your owner’s manual for the procedure for resetting the Maintenance Minder, you’ll find that the steps are basically:[ul][li]Key in ignition, engine off;[]Use that button on the dash to cycle through to the Maintenance Minder;[]Press and hold the button for (I think) ten seconds. The maintenance codes will appear in the screen, blinking: A12, or whatever. Release the button once they appear;[*]To reset the Maintenance Minder press and hold the button again for another ten (I think) seconds.[/ul]Those codes that flash during the penultimate step there are the “upcoming” maintenance codes. If you’re just looking ahead, you obviously don’t want to reset the MM yet; don’t do the final step (the second 10-sec “hold”). Simply do nothing for maybe a minute, and the whole procedure will exit on its own, making no changes.[/li]
I assume that the stuff displayed is what it recommends should you decide to do an oil change today (as opposed to when it eventually gets to 0%).
This also means that if you need or want to do an oil change before it gets down to 15% (about to start a cross-country drive and want to take care of this before leaving), you can still query the car for longer-term stuff and do what’s called for.
I kind of stumbled across this, reading between the lines of the documented reset process. I used it for the first time a few weeks ago to see whether I’d need to buy an air filter soon - seemingly with success. I haven’t gotten down to 15% yet, but probably will within a week.
I’m going from memory, so I may be remembering some details of the reset procedure incorrectly. These instructions I’m recalling are for a 2006 Accord - others may be slightly different. I’d advise checking your owner’s manual to confirm.
That is indeed interesting. Just guessing, I suppose that independent mechanics probably would like to have something as a baseline interval for most items. A drive-up customer who’s been carefully ignoring the MM for 60,000 miles and getting the oil change when he remembered to would have a completely-screwed up MM internal calendar.
I do wonder if those baseline intervals came with Honda’s blessing behind the scenes, or if somebody else conjured them up with some judicious common sense.
