My work habits have changed and I needed a vehicle would be used for out of town driving on a frequent basis. I ended up buying a 2006 Honda Civic Sedan (1.8 litre 5 speed automatic). It has 5w-20 as the recommended oil. I expect to put a lot of miles on it in the next 3-5 years, does everyone feel comfortable with 5w-20 on a long term high mileage basis ?. If so any brand that you would recommend most ?. I know 20 weight oils have performed well on many cars on this forum, but it hasn't been around long enough to make long term conclusions, at least not in my opinion. thanks for any opinions.
Would You Run 5w-20 on a Vehicle Earmarked for High Miles ?
- Thread starter Idrinkmotoroil
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Use 5W20 till your warrenty is up if something happens due to the thicker oil i dought honda will cover you. Find a good syntheic 5W20 and enjoy your car.
from what i have read, if the car was specd for 5w20 i would not have a problem running 5w20 in that car for the duration of its life (unless odd things happened in high mileage). if you are nervous about the 5w20 go with a good 5w20 synthetic oil and change it at the honda recommended 10000 mile oci (if it is still that, i know it was on the 04). i have personally seen conventional 5w20 go for 11000 with out using a drop and the stuff looked excellant. i did not do a uoa on it, it was before my bitog time. it was in the time when i thought water would lube an engine better than 5w20. but my thoughts have changed about 5w20.
Fortunately the chance of this happening is zero since this same engine outside of the US is speced with higher viscosities.
I have an Odyssey that's speced 5w-30. Six months after we bought it, the identical engine was speced a 5w-20.
The 20w spec is CAFE driven.
Sure there are plenty of very good 20w UOAs on these engines, but few if any have run a 30w UOA for comparison so we don't really know if the 20s or 30s are better.
If it was my car I would run Redline 5w-20 if I felt the need to stick with a 20w, otherwise I'd run GC.
Actually, being a boutique oil snob, I'd run Motul 8100 E-tech 0w-30.
All right, so I lied again. As a boutique oil snob, if I had to run a 20w it would be Motul 300V 0w20.
$13 a quart isn't a problem, right?
I'd be happy to runa 30w UOA for comparison. I have GTX 5W30 in my 02 CR-V right now. That's the 2.4l iVTEC 4. However, when I first got it, I ran mostly 0W20 M1 and rarely when it wasn't available, 5W30. The GTX is the first dino since the first two oil changes, which were done free at the dealer.
It's always gotten overkill OCI's with changes every 3-4k miles which was about once a month for the first year). After that, I went every 3-4k regardless of time and it would end up being changed about 3-4 times a year.
My mileage consisted of about 200 miles per day of 70 mph interstate commuting. Now that my wife drives it, it's down to about 60 miles per day w/ about 50 of that interstate (the day care is 12 MILES AWAY)!
If you could peek in my engine right now, you'd see a spotless, unvarnished beauty that's never had a minute's trouble. All told, it's got about 64,000 miles. So, 20w has been good for me. I just got the 30w b/c it was on sale and the only weight I saw.
It's always gotten overkill OCI's with changes every 3-4k miles which was about once a month for the first year). After that, I went every 3-4k regardless of time and it would end up being changed about 3-4 times a year.
My mileage consisted of about 200 miles per day of 70 mph interstate commuting. Now that my wife drives it, it's down to about 60 miles per day w/ about 50 of that interstate (the day care is 12 MILES AWAY)!
If you could peek in my engine right now, you'd see a spotless, unvarnished beauty that's never had a minute's trouble. All told, it's got about 64,000 miles. So, 20w has been good for me. I just got the 30w b/c it was on sale and the only weight I saw.
Any Honda can hit 150,000 miles using 5w20 oil.
Any Honda can hit 150,000mi running if it wanted to...
[ December 02, 2005, 08:48 PM: Message edited by: 59 Vetteman ]
[ December 02, 2005, 08:48 PM: Message edited by: 59 Vetteman ]
I have a 2003 Honda Accord with the 2.4 litre I-4 and I have been running Mobil 1 xw-20 since I got it last January. However, I do not run it for 10,000 miles. I go no more than 5000 miles, This might be too conservative, but it's my money and my car. I have not done a UOA, but the UOAs posted here appear to be promising. I was initially worried about 5w-20, but it appears that 5w-20 does a good job. I have also seen several posts regarding 5w-20 and high mileage, so please do a search. Yes, I plan to keep the car forever. I may switch to 5w-30 Mobil 1 once the warranty is gone.
Repeat after me: "THICKER" does NOT mean "better". Repeat thousands of times until you are convinced. ACTUALLY, THICKER means LESS FLOW. It's the flow rate of oil that matters the most in passenger cars, and the thinnest oil that does the job adequately is THE ONE for you. Heavy hauling is different, those conditions may require thicker oil; as the oil temperature goes up from the hauling, the thicker oil is THINNER at operating temperature...if your oil temp isn't really high, the thicker oil can be too thick to flow adequately.
If your engine doesn't show signs of excessive wear (which it won't...this engine and oil supply system is designed to run on xx-20), you can feel free to run this for 300,000 miles plus.
If your engine doesn't show signs of excessive wear (which it won't...this engine and oil supply system is designed to run on xx-20), you can feel free to run this for 300,000 miles plus.
thanks for all of the great replies, I'm starting to feel more comfortable with 20 weights. Unfortunately 20 weight Mobil1 is hard to get up here, I think we only have a couple 20 weight OTC choices and they are conventional. How about Honda 5w-20 oil, didn't it contain lots of moly, I might not feel too bad with it.
Cutehumor, I still have my SRT4, keeping it as my fun car, I didn't want to use it for work and rack up tons of miles. So I have the best of both worlds .
Cutehumor, I still have my SRT4, keeping it as my fun car, I didn't want to use it for work and rack up tons of miles. So I have the best of both worlds .
Mobil 1 5w-30 is on the thin side for a 30 weight. You can use that if the 5w-20 is hard to find. Me, I'd run Motorcraft 5w-20 if changing it every 5000 miles (or whatever that is in km) isn't inconvenient since you're driving a lot.
The '06 has the "no recommended OCI, follow the oil light" maint schedule. I'd be interested to see when your light goes off w/ so much highway driving.
My new '06 went from 100% to 60% oil life after 700 miles...guess I'm on track for a 6-7000 mile OCI.
My new '06 went from 100% to 60% oil life after 700 miles...guess I'm on track for a 6-7000 mile OCI.
thanks for the additional replies. Matt89 my dealer says he's been seeing them coming in at 10,000 kms, so that is about 6300 miles. I only have a 100 kms on mine, couple days old
. I'll let you know how it goes, the manual says it's based on engine revolutions, so I don't think it's all that fancy of an Oil life system.
Amsoil has a full syn group 3 oil that is pretty decent. It is a 7500 mile oil.
Kinda high priced, but an option.
Kinda high priced, but an option.
Are 2006 Honda civics equiped with variable flow oil pumps?
Otherwise, oil flow is directly related to engine speed and NOT viscosity.
Otherwise, oil flow is directly related to engine speed and NOT viscosity.
While using 5w-30 will do your Civic no harm I would just use the recommended 5w-20. Hondas over 10 years old ran a few hundred thousand miles each on 5w-30, and I could probably run my 12yr old 210k mi Civic (1.5) on 5w-20 (yes, 20) to 300k miles if the rest of the car holds together.
Fear not for your Civic engine. How is that automatic transmission?
Fear not for your Civic engine. How is that automatic transmission?
Caution oil viscosity sarcasm ahead. Use the thinnest viscosity oil available. If you can find a GF4/SM rated oil with the viscosity of 3 in one oil or -30W-5 or less than or equal to H2O then run that until oil consumption and engine wear become a problem then use oils of increasing viscosity to control engine knock and oil consumption as required. End of sarcasm. Flame suit on. Any modern SM rated 5W30 should provide superior protection especially in extreme temperature conditions (better HTHS,exception for RL 5W20) in my opinon. Rickey
the automatic tranny is alright, with 5 speeds I find it hunting for gears up and down a lot more than the old 4 speeds, but it works better for highway driving by dropping the rpms. It is kinda odd, the only gear choice after the full 5 speed selection ( D ), is third gear (D3), which reduces gear hunting but is geared lower than past 3rd gears so the rpms stay up high even in low speed city driving. The tranny can be a bit abrupt under downshifts. But the worst part of the setup is the drive by wire system, it is just *** awful, give me the good ol' throttle cable any day as throttle response is horrendous. I think it would be worse on the manual tranny equipped vehicles too, I feel sorry for the new Si owners they will really hate this DBW system.
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