Honda Ridgeline OCI

[cassidy]

I have a Honda Ridgeline, I drive mostly freeway. I use Valvoline conventional oil and I want some opinions on the maint. minder and the length of the oci it uses. Under my driving conditions it usually goes about 7100 miles for an oci. I have read that the maint. minder is calibrated to use conventional oil but is 7000+ miles too much for a conventional oil? I quized the local Honda dealer and they recommended not to follow the maint. minder and not to go more than 5000 miles even using their house oil which is a synthetic blend. I've had the truck for a while and havent had any problems but now that it has a 100,000 miles I dont want any sludging problems in the future as I plan on keeping it untill its ready for the scrap yard.

 

[Norm Olt]

Shoot, I'll bite...

For your application after 100K miles I'd splurge on some Pennzoil Platinum or Quaker State Ultimate Durability (if & when on $ale with rebate$) or try a syn-blend / High Mileage oil if you are going to continue the 7K OCI's.

Not a lot more $, really.

Is there sludge now? Gas mileage dropping? Smoke?

If not don't sweat it too much.

Cheers!

 

[JavierG]

I average around 6800 miles OCI based on the MM. I let it go to 0% as I usually use PU, PP or a syn blend. My Honda dealer told me to follow the MM as the engineers knew what they were doing. On the Ridgeline Owners Club forum it's not unusual to see some of the guys go 10k or higher per OCI using conventional oil. Check them out for more specific advice on your Ridge. Great truck!

 

[TC33]

I average 5800 to 6000 miles OCI allowing the MM to get to
I reccommend you drop in at the forum JavierG mentioned. There is a wealth of knowledge and lots of interesting reading there.

 

[moto94536]

I too have Honda Pilot which the engine is similar to ridgeline.. I drive mostly highway.. I get about 9,000 miles when the oil life went down to about 10 Pecent.. But I still don't want to run 9,000 miles with the dino..

So I recommend using dino and do 5k oci.. Or 7,000 with syn blend or synthetic.... Oil is cheap.

 

[cassidy]

Yeah I am a member over on the Ridgeline forum, but not many use conventional over there so I thought I would try here.

 

[moto94536]

I know people with Honda that use dino and get over 200,000 miles, very easy...

for example, My toyota camry 251,000 miles and still going..

I will go 6,000 miles max with the dino..

 

[JavierG]

Since you drive mostly hwy miles I really don't see a reason not to keep using dino. A couple of guys at ROC have ocer 300k miles doing just that. And they let the MM get down below 10% before they change the oil. I drive mostly stop and go city miles which is why I go with syn with the current syn blend being the exception.

 

[Hokiefyd]

Our MDX, with essentially the same engine, gets Mobil 1 0W-20 changed every 5,000 miles, but there is no maintenance minder on ours and we do mostly city driving. The school is just 2 miles down the road, so there's a lot of short-tripping with this vehicle.

All highway? I'd definitely stretch it out further, but I'd still consider using a synthetic oil. From what I've read, the Honda V-6 engines aren't quite as easy on oil as some of their 4-cylinder designs, and the cylinder head area gets real hot. I don't know if that's true or not, but it seems that for the relatively small difference in cost between conventional and synthetic oil, especially over an 8-10k mile OCI, synthetic might provide the best value.

 

[RichR]

Cassidy,
Do not listen to the greedy dealer.
Do listen to the MM.
I decided to use synthetic for the 6-7k oci's since I have a BITOG
stash and do a lot of city driving.And yes there are high mileage examples that have had only dino.And with your highway use you should be o.k. with either oil.
But I would rather go with synthetic.

P.S.Enjoy the Cruck!