Originally Posted By: mhadden
As far as the silicon goes, EVERY Honda that I've had recently (08 Civic, 08 CR-V, 09Accord, 11 Pilot, 11 Fit) have all had high silicon levels, even after changing out the filter and inspecting for leaks past the filters. I sure in the [censored] wish I could figure out what it is, but I can't. It may not help that we live in an area that has a lot of sand, but the filters should be working.
The sad thing is that this vehicle is not worked THAT hard. Again, its used mostly as a daily driver by my wife, mostly rural driving. I occasionally (less than 4 times a year) use it to tow a landscape trailer of which my heaviest load was right around 3,000lbs for 30 miles. As mentioned, I put M1 5W20 back in it when I took this sample, but I'll surely put in 5W30 to see how it reacts.
Are the silicon levels really that high? I agree that your results have been poor but on my 2008 K20Z3 (Civic Si) from 10,000 miles through my last UOA at 36,000 miles I've been between 9-14 PPM of Si on samples run between 3400 and 8200 miles, including an unknown amount of time (at least a few thousand miles) where I had a major unfiltered air leak and wear metals have been REALLY low with the exception of lead right from the FF. See all but my FF UOA here
2008 Civic Si Moderately Modified and all the way back to my FF here
Civic Si back to First OC I don't think silicon is to blame here.
This doesn't bode well for my next vehicle purchase as I'd like to add a new Odyssey to the stable in the next year or two. Maybe these VCM engines will only make 120-150k miles as opposed to Honda's best I4 engines which last longer than the rest of the car. I know that Honda's 5-speed automatic transmission often start to develop serious problems in the 80-130k mile range.
Anyway, I agree with the advice to go to a quality conventional oil or an inexpensive syn and at least pull a sample around 4-5k and see how things look and decide whether to keep or dump the oil. You'll get an idea how linear your fuel dilution problem, wear metals, viscosity, silicon, etc. are. Trying a 5w-30 or 0w-30 won't hurt anything and unlike a Xw-40 oil, if you did have a failure of some sort when the dealership has the oil tested the Xw-30 oil will be well within family. For example the Pennzoil Platinum 5w-30 I've been using appears to be crossing the line into a 20 grade oil around 4000 miles anyway and if you've got fuel dilution you'll get there quicker than my shear-o-matic 8000+ RPM engine does.
One other question: Did you mention what kind of oil filter you're using? The Purolator Pureone is what I've been using since '07 and seems to be a darling of a filter for the price.
