I Think I Know Why Honda Recommends Leaving Factory Fill Oil in So Long

[jthorner]

Honda's factory fill motor oil contains a huge amount of Moly. My UOA on the '03 Accord showed Moly at 479 after 2,800 miles of use. Now that I have read much of the background material on this site and others I am of the understanding that correcty formulated moly additives will plate onto new engine parts and provide an additional layer of both protection and anti-wear properties.

I have not seen any of the aftermarket 5W-20 oil analysis results with anywhere near this level of moly indicated.

Honda's owner's manual says explicitly to keep the factory fill oil in until the first scheduled change (7,500 miles on my car).

The logical conclusion seems to be that Honda wants that high level of factory fill moly to have a chance to plate onto the engine parts.

If this is so, why then does Honda say not to use aftermarket oil additives? Wouldn't sometime like Lubro Moly (popular with the German car folks) or one of the other moly oil additives be a good thing to use from time to time? Maybe Honda has not gotten around to putting one in a Blue Bottle labeled Honda Secret Sauce Engine Protector at $29.99

.


John

 

[SteveD2]

quote:

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Originally posted by jthorner:
If this is so, why then does Honda say not to use aftermarket oil additives?

---

Most (if not all) manufacturers tell you not to put any additives in the engine, because there are alot of bad ones, and there are alot of idiots who will blindly use them and think they are wonderful.

 

[Titanium_Alloy]

I might be wrong but as far as I understand most (if not all) factory fill oils are the same type and grade you can get at the stealership. As I presume the only reason we see high levels of Molybdenum in factory fill oils is that they use assembly lube/grease on new motors and this has nothing to do with actual engine oil. Engine parts (crankshafts, cams, lobes, and etc.) are already greased/lubed by a thin layer at engine assembly (or is it manufacturing?) plant. I think that this is done not only for to protect the new engine during the break in, but to protect actual parts from corrosion and environmental factors until they arrive at car assembly line.

On assembly lube see a post by MoleKule:
Assembly Lube and Grease

Regards,

 

[Shannow]

TitaniumAlloy,
it's not the case downunder at least.

The factory fill on my Nissan (diesel) is a 10W-30 CF-4, with a fair bit of moly. The only oil that Nissan sell is a 15W-40 CF-4 (can't validate the moly).

 

[Alan]

The reason why Honda and many other manufactuers go 7500 mile on the first OCI and subsequent OCI's is so the customer won't feel they'll be bogged down by that hindersome and stupid "car maintinance".

But hey if the car maker recommends 7500 miles on dino then it most be a super reliable car!Shoot I wouldn't be surprised if the supposed Toyota V6 sludge problem could of entirely been avoided by going with 3k/3m OCI.Mercedes just recently got bit in the rear end for it's 15K OCI.

 

[jthorner]

It is not that Honda simply recommends the first OCI at 7500 miles, but rather that they go out of their way to warn the owner NOT to change the oil early on the first OCI.

John

 

[DJ]

Anyone know how much breakin Honda does before installing the engine? I heard GM runs the Vette motors for something nuts like 40 hours at WOT before it is even installed. Sure it sounds like an exageration but most exagerations have some basis in reality.

 

[JohnBrowning]

I doubt it is assembly lube! Manufactures use very little "assembly lube" on engine componets!Moly assembly lubes in the past have had rather large particles of moly that would plug up a filter in 20 mintes of running! This is why a lot of machine shops use plain lithium instead of moly!

Most mechanics simply use motor oil or trany fluid on parts and nothing more!

I do not belive that the plants in Japan building the engines are going to use cheaply made Mobile Drive Clean. Oil products are too expensive to waste on an inferior product like that in Japan. Remember Japan has almost zero natual resorces. Petrolem is so expensive i Japan they do not even have Vasoline!

 

[Kestas]

quote:

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Originally posted by DJ:
I heard GM runs the Vette motors for something nuts like 40 hours at WOT before it is even installed. Sure it sounds like an exageration but most exagerations have some basis in reality.

---

I rather doubt the 40-hour figure. I have visited engine factories and am quite familiar with a high volume production environment. I would be a huge undertaking to run production engines 40 hours each before shipping to the assembly plants. I don't know what the Corvette production numbers are, but I believe there is only one plant that produces them. We could do the math using a 40-hour run plus setup and teardown time to figure how many such stations would be needed at the engine plant. Setup isn't easy. The engine needs to be hooked up to coolant, fuel, and exhaust.

But I have seen each engine produced in a plant run on a dyno as a final test before it goes out the door. They want to discover problems there before it's installed into a vehicle.

 

[Idrinkmotoroil]

Here is my take on this Honda recommendation. I've owned at least 7 Hondas over the last 20 years.

Firstly Honda has been dragged into this "lowest maintenance cost over the first 3 years of ownership" b.s. that the auto industry has been pushing. Manufacturers are stretching service limits to keep these advertised costs as low as possible. These statistics are becoming more and more popular for purchasers of new vehicles so they can choose the cheapest vehicle to own in terms of maintenance costs. Honda used to have a pretty hefty yearly maintenance schedule for their vehicles, but they also had very reliable engines because of that - only made sense. Honda used to recommend spark plugs changed every couple years, valve adjustments once per year, tranny fluid changed once per year, etc... . A couple years ago they revamped their service recommendations and have stretched out these maintenance items further out into the ownership cycle. This has lowered the yearly maintenance cost of their vehicles. In some instances Honda even recommends changing the oil filter every second oil change now, instead of every oil change, which I found very odd. This is a direct result of cost of ownership statistics used in the auto industry. That's where 100,000 mile spark plugs came from, whoever wants to run the same spark plugs for 100,000 miles without even checking them ?, makes no sense to me. I dont think Honda was a willing participant in this lower cost b.s. but they had to compete once other manufacturers began using that information to their benefit.

Secondly, if Honda has all of their cars change their first fill oil at the same time period they will develop a pretty reliable maintenance data base to use for future evaluation of their vehicles. Its one more way to standardize data base info. when they track long term reliability of their engines in use in real world conditions.

thats my opinion.

J.

[ February 15, 2004, 08:08 PM: Message edited by: Idrinkmotoroil ]

 

[heyjay]

Ditto.

For those who lease or plan to trade every 3-5 years, never open the hood. Just drive it.

The rest of us who have to make a car last forever know better. I have a 1984 Ford F-150 that thanks to aggressive maintenance and rustproofing still runs fine, after +500,000km / +300,000 miles.

Jerry

 

[XS650]

quote:

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Originally posted by Kestas:
I rather doubt the 40-hour figure. I have visited engine factories and am quite familiar with a high volume production environment. I would be a huge undertaking to run production engines 40 hours each before shipping to the assembly plants. I don't know what the Corvette production numbers are,

---

Corvette production is about 30,000 cars per year.

Let's assume the engine run-in operation is 24/7 all year.

There are 365*24 =8760 hours in a year. It akes some time to swap engines and do stand maintenance, so lets assume 41 hours per run-in. 8760/41 = 214 engines per dyno per year.

That's 30,000/214 = 140 dynos. In reality, because of holidays, relctance to run 24/7 and other problems it would be more like 250 dynos at the Corvette engine facility.

Not very likely.

 

[DJ]

I even said it sounds like an exageration, but any runtime followed by a drain and new filter would help explain why they will allow the first fill to stay in so long.

 

[Captal]

I have the 2003 Honda Accord 6 speed and I was actually told to come in after 3500 miles because it had "special" break-in oil in. I would never dream of actually going 7500 miles on dino oil

.

I got my oil changed at 3500 at the dealer and asked for 5W30 instead of the 5W20 recommended(I actually watched him change it as well).

Sometime this week I'll be going to Mobil1 5W30 and I'm at about 6200 miles. So I haven't hit 3k miles on this round of oil but the engine is taking a while to crank and I was going to see if the M1 helped.

 

[heyjay]

I can't speak for the new Honda's but can relate my history with an older Honda. In 1992 I purchased a new Honda Prelude SR. I believe the motor was an H22A2.

After nagging the service manager on when to do the first OCI, based on "break-in" and wear, he pointed to the little plastic peel-off sticker on the inside of the windshield almost directly in my line of sight:

3,000 km

I asked if I could switch to Mobil 1 at that time, and he said yes. Once the "initial" OCI was done at the dealer, I ran Mobil 1 5W-30 with 6 month oil changes.

I did try a change to Mobil Delvac 1 5W-40 in summer of 1994 (Temps +110 F in Nevada) when I drove the car to Lost Wages Nevada and back through Florida. Did quite a long summer tour of the U.S.

There was no difference in fuel economy but the motor was a bit quieter and somewhat smoother. I put almost 15,000km highway on that summer and the oil consumption was perhaps 2mm down on the stick.

I sold the Honda in 2000 with 98,000km on the odo. It was an easy sell when the buyer saw my maintenance history. As far as I know, he's also using Mobil 1.

Jerry

 

[2windy]

quote:

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Originally posted by DJ:
...Anyone know how much breakin Honda does before installing the engine?...

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Not sure about any run-in at the engine plant, but they drive 'em hard off the assembly line!

I was on a tour of the Accord factory back in Oct. and was surprised to see them fire 'em up, squeal the tires and run them right on to the rollers. On the rollers, they immediately did what sounded like hard acceleration runs 0-60, while checking the operation of the lights, wipers, etc.

- Scott

 

[moribundman]

My '96 Audi also had the first OC scheduled at 7500 miles. I was told to leave the factory fill, a special break-in oil, in until then. I was also told that all Audi motors have been run on a test bench in the factory before installation.

 

[crossbow]

I got my oil changed at 3500 at the dealer and asked for 5W30 instead of the 5W20 recommended(I actually watched him change it as well).

Capital...

You might want to check out some UOA's on your engine before just going with 5w30 oils.

In the mazda 6s (3.0 V6 Duratec Based) going from 5w-30 mobil1 to 0w-20 mobil1 supersyn in one case dropped some of the wear metals over 50%!

 

[MikeySoft]

quote:

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Originally posted by 2windy:
Not sure about any run-in at the engine plant, but they drive 'em hard off the assembly line!

---

My 03 Accord was built in Japan and had only 1 mile on the odometer and 1.9 miles on the trip meter so they could not have run it too hard.

 

[heyjay]

I know it's not exactly a Honda but this is hard factual.

A friend of mine in Salt Lake City finished restoring a 1970 Chevy C-10 and he put in an LS-1 with 4L60E. Here is the GM Performance Parts recommendation on "break-in" if you don't have access to an engine dyno:

1. Fill with non-synthetic 10W-30 oil
2. Use priming tool to prime oil system
3. Start motor and run at 2,500 RPM with no load
for 30 minutes
4. Change oil and filter using non-synthetic
10W-30
5. Drive at varying speeds and loads for 30
miles, do not use WOT or heavy throttle
6. Run 6 medium throttle runs to 5,000 RPM
coasting off to 20 MPH between runs
7. Run 2 hard WOT runs up to 5,000 RPM
coasting off to 20 MPH between runs
8. Change oil and filter to 10W-40 non-
synthetic
9. Drive 500 miles normally: avoid high RPM,
hard use, towing, or driving at the same
speed
10. Change oil and filter again to 10W-40. You
may use synthetic

Interesting, isn't it?

Jerry