Honda Civic Fuel, Oil, Cleaners & Other MaintenanceExtending the life of your Honda Civic requires the proper fuel, oil, and cleaners, along with other regularly scheduled maintenance. Keep your Honda Civic fuel and oil at the right levels to keep your Civic on the road longer.
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I would rather make them rich than me poor. Can afford a little extra oil, but a new engine install is way to much for me
Well, still dude, you can change your oil every 5,000 miles and get 300,000 miles out of you civic if you keep care of it...less than 5,000 is waste of $$$$$$$ why not get new tires every 2,000 miles too while you're at it man....
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Hey man, here's the exact info found in your honda manual and my honda manual and my haynes repair manual, I don't know where the others got the info
2001/2002 Honda civic Lx, Dx = 3.4 quarts including oil filter
2001/2002 honda civic hx, Ex = 3.7 quarts including oil filter
I got mine directly off Honda website, I put a link in my post. The difference is that my info was for a 2005. They must have added to the oil capacity in some way shape or form But I know my is right too, becasue my '04 civic owner manual says the same numbers I quoted. However, I thinking that 0.1-0.3 quarts will not make much difference.
Well, still dude, you can change your oil every 5,000 miles and get 300,000 miles out of you civic if you keep care of it...less than 5,000 is waste of $$$$$$$ why not get new tires every 2,000 miles too while you're at it man....
Hummmm, lets see cost of tires = $400+ dollars. Cost of oil change = $9. That's over 391 dollar difference, do you see a small difference there? Going back to my point, wht don't you show me a civic that has it's oil changed every 5k and has 300,000 miles on it.
So lets do some math and see just how much I am really wasting here shall we? Maybe then you'll get my point and see just how much money I am wasting.
I drive 15,000 mile a year.
If I change my oil every 3,000 that's 5 oil changes a year.
It costs me $9 to change my oil.
9x5=45, so I spend $45 dollars a year on oil changes.
If I change my oil every 5,000 miles, that's 3 oil changes a year.
It costs me $9 to change my oil.
9x3=$27, so I could spend ONLY $27 doallars a year on oil.
So if I waited to 5,000 miles to change my oil, I would save (45-27)= $18. WHOOOHOOOOOO I could save $18 dollars a year, wow, those oil companies sure are geting rich off me.
But I spent $17,000 to buy my car, I divide that up by 5, that's $3,400 a year.
So long story short, I am willing to spend an extra $18 dollars a year to get the "added" protection for my $3,400 a year I spend on buying my car. SO lets do a little more math. 18/3400=0.005, that means it will cost me less around 0.5% of what I spent on my car to give it that added protection. If I can afford two brand new civic's and a new Accord, I think I can afford a couple extra oil changes.
Comon people, you are squabling over pebbles. If you can afford a new or newwer civic, you shouldn't have a problem paying for oil changes unless you go someplace that charges $30 for an oil change.
actually, if you are changing your oil at 3000 miles you are hurting your car. you are not giving the oil time to breakdown properly and do it's job. cars nowadays are MADE to go 7000-10000 miles between changes.
the first thing to go if you change your oil every 3000 miles will be your catalytic converter. there is an addative in oils that burns out about 2-3000 miles after you put in fresh oil. that addative does damage to the catalytic converter. if you change your oil every 3000 you will never give your cat a chance to work out the chemical, and eventually you'll fail emissions and your cat will go.
care to enlighten me on those additives that burn off around 3,000 miles. I'm a chemical Engineer, we devlope these additive and do the distillation to refine it. So can you tell me what exaclty these additives are and the chemical formula? I will tell you the properties of it.
I'm thinking the additives are actually stabilizers in the oil. When they start to break down the oil it's self starts breaking down. Most of the so called "additives" are actually stabilzers to keep the oil in it's orginal form and lowwer the "break down" temperature of the oil, but I'm just guessing
Since we're arguing here, the cat is under warranty anyway if it breaks down I'll goto honda and they'll install one for free. That shouldn't be a concern. Now are there any REAL problems of changing oil every 3k?
Since we're arguing here, the cat is under warranty anyway if it breaks down I'll goto honda and they'll install one for free. That shouldn't be a concern. Now are there any REAL problems of changing oil every 3k?
Good point, your cat is under warranty for 60,000 miles too, federal law.
Hummm... interesting, but he knows alot about chemistry, but I know more on catalysis The research group I am in, we design the catalysts for Toyota, Mitsu and the DOE. I hate to inform him that phosphorous doesn't come off, hence there is no regeneration. However the main part of the "burn off" is the parfins he was talking about. Parfins will do nothing more than create carbon depostion on the catalytic surface, this will blow away with a few minutes.
You might also want to take note that he says if you want to change you oil every 3k, use a organic oil (or minoil as he calls it), which I do. Organic oils have far less of these stabilizers and other such chemicals like phosphorous and such that can kill your cat. SO I have choosen that changing my oil more often with organic oil versus synthetic with less oil changes is better for the car. However, synthetic oils have one thing organic doen't, a synthetic oil has a solvent that will eat the carbon depostes away that organics will leave. So every 15k, I put a good synthetic (Royal Purple) in my car for 5k. This fact I just mentioned is the myth behind once you put one kind of oil in your car, you can never change. In old low compression cars, carbon could accually seal hair line fractures in the head gasket. Then people would go and put synthetic in and this would eat the carbon away, shortly after that the hiar line fracture would expand and they would have leaky head gasket.
The last statement is what you should pay attention to though. Sulfur, in the world of catalysis, sulfur kills EVERYTHING. Before you say I am changing my oil to often, you should also see where I am from, Ohio. Ohio has one of the highest sulfur contents in our gas. Sulfur will also break down oil and degrade in to little parfins that will burn away very fast or get suspended in oil. Some synthetic oils can resist sulfur for a little longer, but you are only talking about a 1000 more miles with the high sulfur content fuel we have.
In conclusion, some people can get away with a 5k oil change. I use organic oil and high sulfur fuel, I do not think it is wise for people in my situation to go that long. If you live CA (here sulfur is very limited) and use synthetic oil, you can surely go longer than I.
good info. still contradictory to other posts i've read though.
the point was not that the catalyst ever rids itself of phosphorous, but rather if you change your oil more frequently, you will burn out the cat sooner.
the other article which i saw posted (im looking for it, i want to say it was on BITOG) was in regards to the oil not having enough time to do it's job. the way it was explained, the breakdown of the chemicals suspended in the oil needed time to take effect and properly pick up pollutants from the engine. changing the oil before it's had a good chance to do this can be harmful since the pollutants will not all be cleared out.
if you change your oil, it should be dark in color. if it is not, then you are either running very lean on your engine, or you're changing it too soon.
so while this may not be a direct indication that changing the oil too soon is hazardous, there is just as little proof regarding the fact that not changing it at 3000 miles is hazardous as well.
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Last edited by S2000man01; 02-19-2005 at 04:05 PM.
Sweet so the truth comes out. I'll stick to 3k oil changes with dino.
My point exactly. I figured that if I change with dino oil, I only want to go about 3k becasue it will not hold up do to the sulfur, but if I go with synthetic oil, I can go 5k. Thing is though, it costs more to change with synthetic less often than it does to change more often with organic oil, so I save money and keep sulfur out of my oil by changing every 3k.
good info. still contradictory to other posts i've read though.
the point was not that the catalyst ever rids itself of phosphorous, but rather if you change your oil more frequently, you will burn out the cat sooner.
the other article which i saw posted (im looking for it, i want to say it was on BITOG) was in regards to the oil not having enough time to do it's job. the way it was explained, the breakdown of the chemicals suspended in the oil needed time to take effect and properly pick up pollutants from the engine. changing the oil before it's had a good chance to do this can be harmful since the pollutants will not all be cleared out.
if you change your oil, it should be dark in color. if it is not, then you are either running very lean on your engine, or you're changing it too soon.
so while this may not be a direct indication that changing the oil too soon is hazardous, there is just as little proof regarding the fact that not changing it at 3000 miles is hazardous as well.
Yeah, there isn't defintaive either way I guess. But like I siad, I have high sulfur gas, that is the primary reason. My oil becomes dark after about 1000 miles and is very dark by 3k. It seems what this guy is taling about though synthetic oil. Synthetic oil has all these addatives that "clean" the engine. Really, by cleaning they mean it breaks down carbon deposites, which can also be called pollutants. When cabon forms a ring, it is very hard to break. Organic oil does not have this abilty, hence this doesn't apply to most organic oil. Since organic oil doesn't do this, I change in the synthetic every 15k and let the synthetic work for about 5k in my engine before taking it out. This allows the synthetic oil to break down all the carbon deposites that the organic oil has left behind.
I'm not really disagreeing with him or you, I'm just saying in the situtation I'm in (where sulfur is a problem) and I'm to cheap to do synthetic oil changes regularly, this is the best solution. My final point is this:
If you use synthetic oil, go 5k between changes becasue it will break down all the carbon deposite in your engine.
If you are cheap like me, use organic oil and change it every 3k, becasue it doen't break down the carbon and you don't have to worry about that kind of stuff. But you should still need to break the carbon down with synthetic every now and then.
That's worrying me about the carbon. My block was a mess after 20k with dino oil, but I need to take the car somewhere to get oil changed. synthetic would be a big hassle for me unless I buy the oil and have dealer do it or something. which weight of synthetic is the best for our cars, and brand?
from the oil diaries i read i think i remember valvoline synpower or something like that being one of the better ones. there were a couple more.
here are the oil diaries posted on s2ki.com. some good reading in there if you're so inclined.
also i should clear up my statement saying you are "hurting" your car changing your oil every 3000 miles. really my reference is to the catalytic converter and the phosphorous (granted there is less of this with minoils). i cannot find the other article online i had (could have sworn it was on BITOG) read that talked about even minoil being left better off changing 5000 rather than 3000. it was basically saying that today's cars are more than made for it (particularly honda and subaru as they are very "oil friendly" cars). anything before that is a waste of money and resources.
But I know my is right too, becasue my '04 civic owner manual says the same numbers I quoted. However, I thinking that 0.1-0.3 quarts will not make much difference. 
The research group I am in, we design the catalysts for Toyota, Mitsu and the DOE. I hate to inform him that phosphorous doesn't come off, hence there is no regeneration. However the main part of the "burn off" is the parfins he was talking about. Parfins will do nothing more than create carbon depostion on the catalytic surface, this will blow away with a few minutes.
