2018 Accord 2.0 T FF UOA

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Doccac....I had the exact same thoughts but just dump the oil and leave the filter. Came across some articles that in the case of oil dilution, there's not enough in those tiny oil filters to warrant changing the filter and losing any bit of its cleaning efficiency. I surely wouldn't put anything higher than a 0W-20 in it for warranty purposes. I did come across some information that one person had about 7k miles on this engine and was getting a new one. The reason, according to what I read, was that the dilution was so bad it thinned the oil how so much that it eroded the overhead cams and ruined the engine. That is the ONLY case I've come across that may be attributed to fuel dilution. At that many miles, they were at the very end of the MM.
 
The Honda Maintenance plan is to only change the filter every other change. I don't know if the dealer's are actually doing that, but its almost like Honda thinks the filter only needs changed every 15-20K miles. I saw the guy's comments that got a new engine and all I could think was is that LSPI and grenading the engine instead of oil dilution. You can't really figure this out from all the reports people put on the forums.
 
Roger that. Now, that one comment going to a 30 weight would seem to hold merit. I'm not a chemist, a biologist, but wouldn't that 30 weight have a higher surface tension and thus create a better seal between the rings and cylinder walls that would hold up better under all that boost? I mean think about it.....we've all been forced to run 20 weights for what???? CAFE. None of these problems were showing up in this magnitude before. Got to be some sort of correlation there. You don't see Ford or GM telling the owners with supercharges to run 20 weight oils. I'm sure top fuel dragsters don't either. BUT...if we did....we risk losing warranty claims. Kind of a catch-22 situation. This is our 5th Honda, I've only used M1 5W-30's in all of them prior.
 
I've seen a couple manufactures also claim fuel dilution is typically worst while the engine is breaking-in. Assuming this is the worst it will be and backed by serial UOA's, as long as I don't see excessive wear why would I care? The proof of whether this is or isn't detrimental is in the UOAs IMO.
 
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This is pretty good info on LSPI for those, like me, that didn't know.
https://www.bing.com/videos/search?...832ECF5C6D57821D3AA1832ECF&FORM=VIRE

Low RPM seems to come up a lot. Told my wife to just leave the econ button alone and just drive without it. Don't think it'll make that much difference in mileage anyway. That video also talks about using GF6 oils. Is Honda synthetic a GF 6 oil? Wow...I'm REALLY REALLY starting to miss the 14 CRV, but she got totaled. Didn't have to worry about all this stuff!!!!
 
Originally Posted by Danh
A 30-weight oil is probably a good idea, though there's the warranty issue that has been debated here forever. And I wonder if a 30-weigh oil might provide a slightly better piston ring/cylinder wall seal as well.
The seal would be a tad better.

Using an 0w30 instead of a 0w20 would mostly give you some viscosity-drop margin, and allow you to leave the oil in for 7,500 miles. (I go 7,500 miles, per GM OLM, in an '18 Equinox right now, using 0w20 becuase I don't think its fuel diluting, BTW, not Honda, but a 1.5T anway!)

I was wondering if Honda has recalled the small turbo engines yet. Not in the U.S. only in China right now! ----"Years ago the kind of recall Honda announced on Monday could have been dealt through a so-called customer service action, industry officials and experts say. That refers to what the auto industry calls a "quiet recall", which is less damaging financially and image-wise, where an automaker fixes a non-safety issue, often free of charge, whenever the customer comes to the dealership.
"Without Weibo, it would have gone on for years," said James Chao, chief automotive analyst for IHS Markit in the Asia-Pacific region. "That's the way it was for the industry in the pre-Weibo, pre-Twitter era.""
----- https://www.reuters.com/article/us-...in-china-over-engine-issue-idUSKBN1FW124

but don't we have similar "web-pressure" here in North America????
 
We do, but you got to look at the population differences and from what I recall, there's more short trip driving and it's way colder in China than here. Those engines were manufactured in China and I wonder if there's an actual flaw in production over there. Engines for NA Honda's are built in Ohio. Just looked at a video to change the oil on the CRV, got to remove this PITA aluminum plate to get to the drain and filter. Wonder how much oil I could suck out of the dipstick oil, akin to what I do with my Mercruiser boat engine.
 
Originally Posted by Danno
If it was my car, I would change at 5,000 miles intervals. Old school maybe, but that would be my routine.
No reason other than peace of mind.


This, and use a 30 weight. My approach would be mitigating the risks inherent to these engines. Then I would have peace of mind
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I would not be comfortable with a 5-6cst oil in a turbo DI fuel diluter. There are limits to low viscosity oils, especially when they have been compromised by a load of fuel.

Your flash and viscosity is down. There's more than 1% fuel in that sample.
 
There's no risk of losing warranty running a 30 weight. They'll pull a sample and it'll be a 20 weight viscosity
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If I was worried, I would buy a bunch of 20 weight oil, take pictures of the receipts and containers, then return them for 30 weight.

I can't understand why anyone would be ok with running a 20 weight in these engines. Took me a while to get comfortable with a 30 weight in the ATS. However, I change it at twice the OLM interval. My UOA still had it in the 9+ cst range, which I'm comfortable with.
 
One thing that I wonder about is if that oil (0-20W) is being sheared down that relatively quicker, why is it still being pushed by Honda? You know they've done their homework on it. What's keeping them from telling everybody to go to a 30W for added insurance. Cost is about the same. Besides the dilution issue, what about the hot summers? That along with the dilution aspect, would seem that oil would be trashed after 3K miles. Are we going back to 3K oil changes?? GOT to be some logic about this somewhere.
 
even though I've been here a while, I never really got into the matrix of oil analysis, until now. School me if needed, but I have a question. A UOA on a differnt page showed a sus visc. at 210 to be at 44.8. According to the visc. charts, that shows the oil sheared down just a tad below a 20W, which would still be high for a 10W. Looking at the Cst visc. at 100 and it showed 5.65. That equates to about the same, below the 20W, but high on the 10W. My question, yes, it's not in spec with a 20W oil, but it still is a strong 10W weighted oil. After reading a lot of post on this, I was lead to believe that the oil is absolutely trashed and will kill your engine because it's out of range. However, it is still protecting the engine as a 10W oil. Notice, I used the word protecting. Does a 10W oil not protect an engine also? The only spec that it's out of is because it now doesn't identify with a 20W, but that should be expected especially since it's a turbo and getting the heck beat out of it. I'm willing to bet that Honda knew this and tested for this as well and they are OK with it. I've read numerous forum from civic and crv owners that complained about dilution, but that's all they've done. Complain. I've only read one post that the owner claimed the dilution eroded his cams and caused engine failure and Honda is now giving him a new engine. The more I research into this, the more I'm learning that this whole dilution thing isn't that bad as everyone is making it out to be. The sky is NOT falling.
 
Schmoe, Honda engines are very tolerant of thin oils. They have already moved to 0w-16 in some of their engines ( like Toyota), and 0w-8 is on the horizon for them. Since wear stays basically OK even when KV100 shows thinning down to 6 or below, that basically says this engine has enough margin to not worry Honda about all-out engine failures, essentially warranty costs, etc.
 
Thanks for that....didn't know. It's funny, long time ago there were plenty of arguments on BITOG about thick or thin oils....I was on the thick side, of course. Now, I think I'm leaning thin.
 
Originally Posted by Eddie
I find it interesting that with the hysteria about Honda's high fuel dilution, that no one has commented on how it effect the wear values. I have yet to see a bad UOA from a Honda 1.5L turbo engine after the FF. Ed



It's from the posters whom state use a 40 grade over a 30 grade in Ecoboost engines without any merit.
 
Originally Posted by Schmoe


Also, a lot of the comments still claim they are getting 26-35 mpg, if it's dumping that much fuel, wouldn't that mileage be a lot worse? I know it's 100% all not user error, but some of those stories I just can't believe. .


It's not dumping gallons of fuel into the oil. We're talking a cup or two of un-evaporated fuel mixed with oil over thousands of miles of driving. No one would notice the loss in MPG average because the amount is tiny per tank of gas used.
 
Pretty interesting comments thus far.

I can't imagine that Honda didn't do enough research during R&D to spot the fuel dilution. So the obvious conclusion is that, they know it can be a problem under certain SEVERE driving conditions but probably 99% of the engines will survive... barely. Only time will tell.

I doubt these engines will be around in 20+ years ALL STOCK and ORIGINAL and running just fine, like the older Honda D series, etc can be found today.

I think Honda started making typical throw away engines like most manufacturers produce today. It's designed to make it past the warranty and then they want you to BUY A NEW CAR. Simple as that.
 
Maybe the current class action lawsuit against Honda for this dilution issue will allow warranty engine failure rates to be made public.
In court, like others above have said, Honda could argue that this fuel dilution problem isn't killing engines in significant %'s, nor even causing iron wear to elevate much or at all.
Should be an interesting lawsuit.
 
I'm not sure why everyone is expecting massive oil level increase.

How about this scenario...

~~ Engine burns 1/4th quart of oil during your 6,800 miles of use.

~~ Engine gets 1/4th quart of fuel into the oil.

Your oil level didn't change but the reality = YOU'VE STILL GOT FUEL IN THE OIL! It's obviously coming in somehow.
 
1. I've had lots of Honda engines, lots of new engines and have never seen one burn significant amount of oil, ever. I know it must happen but it's rare.
2. I check the dipstick at least once a week, always in the morning and always cold. I have not seen the oil level vary in any noticeable way on any of my 3 Honda cars.
3. What you are describing would require an almost 1:1 volume exchange between burnt oil and added gas. Two separate and unrelated (in a brand new engine) but equal things. I think the odds of that are minuscule.
4. My conclusion is that certainly these engines are diluting with gas ,as designed, but they seem to be functioning as expected in dealing with that. All coupled with no unusual wear pattern = nothing unusual to worry about.

If someone dumps 7 qts of oil out of a 3.7 qt sump, as one guy reported, then that's a problem.
 
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