On a new car with only 12 miles, how many miles should you drive before you change oil and filter. The miles driven will be normal light duty miles, in town and freeway.
Check the owner’s manual and follow the instructions for a new car “break in”. This can vary greatly between different manufacturers/engines/etc. Then, follow the manual’s maintenance schedule and you should be good.
The owners manual will explain this.
Tester
This is covered in the owner’s manual, surprisingly enough.
My friend bought a new chevy 1500 and changed the oil & filter at 700 miles. He put the used oil under the work bench until he got a container. A couple days later he pulled out the oil pan and it looked strange. He ran a magnet through the oil and there were metal fragments on the magnet. If he had waited till he had driven 3000 miles, I’m sure that would had done some kind of damage. Wright?
Honda fills the motor with a special oil at the factory and therefore follow the owner’s manual for recommendations from Honda about “break-in period” and the 1st oil change.
Wrong…If he was able to extract metal fragments suspended in the oil, the engine would have self destructed by now.
Most manufacturers recommend a NORMAL change interval. Modern engines don’t shed “Filings”, “Fragments”, or “Shavings” during the break-in process. If they do, they will never live PAST the break-in period…
the dealer should have this answer. certainly dont go past the recommend mileage probally 3k miles.allthough some cars say 7500k .and dont drive this at high speeds over 55mph so the engine breaks in nicely.if automatic dont forget transmission fluid change next year.
The OEM recommendation is to follow the Maintenance Minder (or whatever they call it, if so equipped). The former recommendation was 10,000 miles.
The oil isn’t special, but there is tons of moly assembly lube slathered all through the thing.
Now on any other car, people would tell you to change it out early, but since it’s a Honda …and has been assembled with ancient processes that were handed down from monks from pre-feudal Japan …you have to ask yourself, is it worth the risk. Honda owners violating this sacred pact have been known to be attacked by ninja mercenaries descending from above. Now being a semi-pro risk taker, I’d be up for a short change …but 99 other swinging drivers out there wouldn’t touch it with a 10’ pole. Consider your choice very carefully.
Didn’t they hand you the insert on meditation techniques in achieving the “Honda ZEN”??
Sounds like he had a defective engine, or a faulty filter. Given that almost no cars have their oil changed until several thousand miles are traveled, and that almost no properly-maintained engines fail from oil problems, this is a (extremely rare) exception, not the rule.
Break in is not overly demanding now because of improvements in machine tools, cutting tools and cutting lubes so there will be little metallic debris generated from break in. Our owner’s manual says to change the oil and filter when the dash computer says to do it which for our driving was a little over 7000 miles. A one year maxumum oil and filter life is also specified.
This time, however, I changed the oil filter but not the oil at 300 miles and then again at 1000 miles. It was likely not necessary but it made me happy. You can do that and be happy too!