Oil Life Monitor ??

[John105]

This is cool and goes along with what I have read on them. To manually keep track of what these do would be quite the task for the average owner.

I actually have maintenance in excel (old fashioned). I have every oil change’s odometer, distance traveled, and % remaining per the vehicle. It’s disappointing to change the oil in < 4,000 miles as a general rule, but the car doesn’t see the highway much. She works < 2 miles from home. So in a way it makes sense.

Also car came with Dexos 1 semi synthetic, but I use full synthetic. Maybe I could stretch it but I just follow the OLM.

 

[I<3oil]

1.5T is a fuel diluter turbo, move to 5w-30 and change every 5k miles

5k for sure unless no-VII HPL

 

[buster]

I’m around 5,500 miles on Amsoil SS.

OLM 27%

 

[thetricky]

But says who? We are talking about long term reliability, these cars are designed to be throw away cars unless people like us do what it takes to make them more reliable or as reliable as they can be.
Meaning who says, rather who KNOWS that all of these small displacement engines are doing just fine?

That's my point, most are not even aware they have an issue. Others consider 100k as done, others know they have issues but they do not understand the root cause or that it is an oil issue, and yet others simply do not care as its a throw away vehicle.
Whereas, again within the criteria I mentioned above, I have yet to actually witness any type of long term reliability from an average owner that did not understand the oil needs. Yes, I would agree that you have a few of these that will run forever on any oil, but look at what they are. Engines like the MZR, GM 2.5, certain FORD 4cyl, many HONDA 4cyl of the early 2000's and prior and a few more. But notice NONE of them are a modern DD DI Turbo... I would definitely still subscribe to the belief that you just simply do not get the forgiving nature of care free reliability with a modern DD DI turbo 4cyl, unless you make it do so. Could this change? Absolutely as technology continues to be refined.

edit: added DI, resulting in DD DI (daily driven, direct injected)

Never said those cars will be million milers, they also aren’t exploding in the streets at 100k miles. Whether people get into the intricacies of modern oils and engines or not, it is very clear oils are being formulated to keep these cars on the road longer.

 

[UncleDave]

My Titan just has a maintenance reminder that is factory default set for 5k . I think you can change the set point but I like it at 5k .

FWIW - the port injected titan default is 7500.

 

[UncleDave]

Get ready for an even more controversial topic when the MM (maintenance minder) says its time to replace the oil only and not the filter - Honda has you alternate an FCI every other OCI.

 

[OilUzer]

Get ready for an even more controversial topic when the MM (maintenance minder) says its time to replace the oil only and not the filter - Honda has you alternate an FCI every other OCI.

Maybe they are learning from bitog.

 

[UncleDave]

Still waiting for all those 1.5T with thrown rod bearings. <Sarcasm>

Along with the rhythm thats gonna get me.

 

[OilUzer]

Along with the rhythm thats gonna get me.

You have to live in Miami for that.

 

[UncleDave]

My daughter recently purchased new a 2024 Honda CRV with a turbo engine. It currently has 6,200 miles on the factory oil. The OLM is showing 50%. Pulling the dipstick the oil is pretty nasty looking and nothing to be proud of.

I cannot imagine that the car could go almost 12K before needing an OC. I also think there are many variables that the monitor cannot take into account such as winter driving and fuel dilution.

I told her to go to a 5K oil change. She is getting that done tomorrow.

What do you say? Is the monitor a true guage of oil quality? Am I jumping to the wrong conclusions?

Honda OLM does take winter driving into account - it measures several parameters, intake, and coolant temp air being two of 5 if not more.

It applies a life penalty for cold weather driving thats almost as severe as extremely hot temps.

Honda takes great care to test it against the results it returns and applies a fairly generous buffer against error.

If you think you can do better guessing, then by all means change out when you see fit.

I follow the MM/OLM and keep an old school FRU 7317 with a filtermag on it in place for 20K.
After the last one I cut at 21K and 5 years, Im considering leaving it in for 30K.

 

[John105]

It's probably hard to believe in 2024, but there was a university study/discipline called engineering. Still is but with AI maybe we don't need it anymore. It was traditionally another 20+ credits over a normal bachelor's degree. I like to think that on cars, up to 2005 even 2008, they ran buck wild (engineers > accounting at that time). Who would put a true dual exhaust on a car in 2007, or design a feature where a car had heat after being shut off for 30 min, and why when software can achieve the same results....so I would like to lean towards an OLM having some engineering behind it. Or, we can simply invalidate that and do 3k oil changes like we did in 1988. Retro is cool too. A coworker yesterday asked me, do we still use CRTs? And I said yeah, we still have them at our 90's retro center, where you can see the warehouse of the future, in 1985.