If the truth is known, the value of a car come trade in time is measured more by the condition of the body, not the frequency of oil changes. When was the last time you had to sign an affidavit indicating your oil change interval ? 5000 mile oil changes will easily make an engine out last the body of a car in most conditions. Pay more attention to overall maintenance and body inspections then what I call, the oil change fetish.
I have a 2009 pilot with 20,000 miles and I let it go down to 20% oil life left. My cars last long and I would never waste my money by changing every 3,000 miles.
Hahaha, I was trying to decide if he was joking or not. It’s hard to tell in situations like this.
My girlfriend’s dad has a 2006 Pilot and he follows the OLM down to 0 (very frequently goes several hundred miles beyond zero in fact) on conventional dealer bulk oil and he now has 95,000 miles on that Pilot and it still purrs like new.
wear, yes, but oil issues do tend to be somewhat common reason to junk the engine/car. How many posts have we seen that says "My red oil change light came on today, then started blinking. It made a funny noise, then died before I could get it to a mechanic to change the oil. Now my car won’t restart, what’s wrong? Was I not fast enough getting to Jiffy Lube? I was doing 90mph the whole way there."
and out of those kinds of posts, how many more die each day that we DON’T hear about?
A warning seems a bit odd. Maybe stating it was unnecessary to change the oil more often would be more appropriate.
" Very good answer except you left out the driving conditions. Heavy stop and go driving, short trips, etc, shorten the life of the oil. That is something to consider when making this decision."
That’s exactly what the OLM does. It’s a computer that monitors your driving conditions and determines the remaining oil life on that basis.
Nearly 100,000 miles in less than 4 years, and yes, you can go to 0% that way since it is likely all highway driving, which is very easy on oil. I still would not do it, but would change at about 25% remaining with this type of driving.
When the bearings go, the device is just thrown away.
Many hard drives fail this way. I’ve opened a few up and given the frozen platters a twist to get them going one more time to recover data.
Forty years ago, I was a graduate student at a major university that had a CDC 6600 computer. The main storage device was a drum. This was similar to a disk drive. The drum revolved and the information was written onto and retrieved from the drum. An employee of the computer center saw a puddle of some fluid in front of the cabinet that held the drum and wiped it up. It turned out that a 50 cent oil seal failed and the employee had mopped up the oil. The bearing froze on the shaft and the computer that served all the research and instructional needs for the campus was down for the better part of a week.
Honda recommends changing the oil at 15%. That is when the "wrench" light comes on. The computer monitors the way you drive(ie: speed, distance, rpm, engine load, outside temp) and determines how long the oil will last. so the harder you drive the vehicle the sooner you need an oil change.
Also it's more than just oil changes. The maintenance minder system on a Honda also tells you when it is time to rotate the tires, change the trans fluid, coolant, spark plugs, rear diff fluid, engine and cabin air filters, and the timing belt. And there are many inspections that the tech is to perform at certain times. As a Honda technician I would recommend following the computer. not only will it save you time and money it will insure the proper maintenance is being performed when it is needed. And one more thing, please do all that the service calls for, there is a reason the computer says you needed it. It's not just some random guess.