Thank God for BITOG!

[Thorn]

I found this site a few weeks ago after purchasing a used 2004 Honda Pilot and noticing it called for 5w20 oil. I needed to find out what the heck 5w20 oil was, and I found this site through a Google search.

Anyway, I still haven't been able to decide which oil to use, so I heard about a "great" site for Pilot owners called Honda-Pilot.org.

The site has a forum for "Polls", so surely I thought I would find a poll on which oil is being used. Well, I found polls on which Pilot commercial is my favorite, what color is my Pilot, etc.

But my favorite has to be "Which finger do you use to unlock/lock the doors?"

BTW, nothing on oil....

 

[MolaKule]

Stick around and read as much as possible.

Lot's of good stuff here.

 

[Pablo]

How do you like the Pilot?

I'm pretty sure that will be my next vehicle.

How much did you pay, if you don't mind me asking?

There are some good 5W-20's out there. Motorcraft, M1, Amsoil spring to my feeble mind.

 

[Thorn]

Thanks for the welcome. Right now, I'm leaning toward leaving the 5w20 experiment to others, and going with a xW30. I just bought 5 quarts of Havoline 5w20 dino beacuse I learned here that Honda likes moly in their oil, and the Havoline is supposed to provide plenty.

The Pilot had 7,400 miles when I bought it, and it has ~9,000 miles now, so I will probably do one or two more changes with the 5w20 dino for break-in and then switch to a xW30 synthetic thereafter.

I paid $27,399 for the EX-L with a Honda Certified Used Car warranty, which, believe it or not, gave me more coverage than a new car warranty. However, the dealer gave me $1200 more for my '99 Accord in trade than Blue Book trade-in value, so it's hard to say what the "actual" price was. At that point I didn't care because the wife was antsy after a few weeks of shopping.

The vehicle is my wife's grocery getter, so I don't get to drive it much. So far, I don't have too many complaints. Some complaints would be:

Lack of "real" spare tire; no separate lift-gate glass that can be opened; expensive dealer-installed options for a tow-hitch ("requires" transmission cooler and power steering cooler and costs almost $1,000 installed; 5w20 oil

; etc.

BTW, I'm stuck with the '97 Subaru with 170K. I have other posts here regarding an Auto Rx treatment for that vehicle (I learned about it here) since I need to get a few more years out of it.

 

[JHZR2]

wow, thats a lot for a used car with no knowledge of breakin.

Get it going on syn oil ASAP!!! M1 5w-20 ought to be a good pick.

Keep the subaru going. If I NEEDED an awd vehicle, or a vehicle with more usable space, Id buy a subaru wagon.

JMH

 

[chas3]

i hope you are using the correct finger to unlock the door.

perhaps bitog needs a similar poll. which hand do you use to unscrew the drain plug?

bought a "used" 2003 dakota with 7000 miles last year. it still has the 80,000 extended warranty. cant understand some people.

 

[Thorn]

Currently, my wife is a stay-at-home mom, so every dollar counts. The several thousand dollars that we saved by buying used was worth the risk to me, not to mention the fact that the Certified warranty is way better than new (I ended up with a 41 month/41K bumper-to-bumper plus a 6+ year, 92K power train warranty - the new warranty is 3yr/36K period). Besides, I had a little bit of knowledge regarding the previous owner who had bought the Pilot new at the same dealership and traded it for an '05 Accord.

Probably, for the same money, we could've bought a brand new Ford Explorer or Chevy Trailblazer (especially with 0% financing). However, I'd rather have a used Honda with 7K than a brand new Ford or Chevy in an equivalent vehicle.

I've had great luck with Japanese cars. I purchased the Subaru referred to above with 7,133 miles on it. It now has 170K, and the only non-routine major repair I had was an alternator, and Subaru belatedly refunded the money to me after they determined that the alternators were not up to snuff, even though the vehicle was well out of warranty.

I bought a '93 Accord with 6K, which my wife made me trade in for the Subaru after we got married because it had a manual transmission. It had 82K when I got rid of it with zero non-routine repairs.

Previously, my wife (then girlfriend) bought a '92 Geo Prizm (i.e. Toyota Corolla) with 29K, and I ran it to 215K before I sold it - with a completely clear conscience. The car ran great.

If I sum up these purchases, we probably saved $12,000 - $15,000 as compared to buying new, and we haven't been burned yet(fingers crossed).