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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don't use anything less. dino oils suck at high rpms. i used castrol syntec for a few oil changes, but after some WOT on highway 280 and a few speeding tickets later that oil was fukin black. fuk that i'm not using dino or 1/2 dino period. synthetic doesn't break down at standard temps, it has much higher resistance to breakdown compared to dino oils like castrol bullshittec
I use mobil one nothing like it?
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Okay, the best oil depends on YOU. How often do want to change the oil? How many miles do you have? How much do want to spend?
If you drive less than 5,000 miles in 6 months, don't waste your money on Synthetic oil. You will never get to see the benfits of synthetic oil, which the only benifit to is that you can go longer between oil changes, just stick with a good quality dino oil. ANd since you should be changing the oil at least every 6 month, it doen't make since to use synthetic.
If you drive more than 5000 every 6 months, ask your self how long you want to go between oil changes. I personally go 4,000 miles on dino oil (valvoline or motorcraft), because the extra milage you get from the synthetic is not worth the extra cost IMO. PLus I want to protect my car, the more frequently you change you oil the better protection you have agianst outside sustances killing you engine. And once agian, if you don't want to go 7,000 miles or on oil, then why spend the extra $$$$ on synthetics?
So, if you REALLY want to go a long time between oil changes, use synthetic. Generally I tell people who drive all highway to go with synthetic, since they can go upwards of 8,000 miles if they drive all highway, and for them, that may only be 1-2 months worth of driving. Afterall, it would really suck if you had to change your oil every 3 weeks. Now if you do more city driving (stop an go and stop and go) then you are putting more stress on the engine, and hence the oil. Specially since the oil must do more cooling, if you live in say San Fransico, where the average speed is about 5 MPH on a good day, then maybe you should run synthetic too, this is the only case I can think of where you should change a synthetic oil every 3,000 miles.
If you drive like most people, maybe 30-40 miles day, a mix of highway and city, your best bet is to go with a good dino oil every 4,000 miles or so.
OF COURSE, THIS IS JUST A GUIDE LINE, if you really want to know how long to go on a specific oil, get your oil tested.
As for brands, pretty much all your synthetic oils are good, stay way from Royal Purple. RP is a very good oil, but the TBN drop very quickly. This is a true race oil becuase most race engines only last 500 miles, so why make an oil that last longer than that? Don't get me wrong, it is probably one of the best oil on the market, but it just does not last long. Mobil 1 is probably the best you will find on a store shelf, Redline and the rest of those high end oils are all good, but not worth the extra $$$ IMO.
As for dino oils, I personally use Motorcraft and Valvoline, Castrol is good too, but generally I go just go with Valvoline before Castrol.
If you look at oil analysis, they all pretty much agree, that for the average driver, a good dino oil like the ones I mentioned above, last about 4,000 miles and a shelf synthetic last about 6-7k miles. So you figure out where you belong and what oil you need.
BTW, if you have over 65,000 miles on your car, I STRONLY suggest using Valvoline Max Life. Why? Because it has a 5 wt% moly count (highest around, which is GREAT for older engines as an anti ware addative) and is 22% synthetic oil and at Wal-Mart you can pick up 5 quarts for about $10-$12, which makes it pretty cheap. I use this in EVERY older car I have.
for the daily commuter with no WOT, rock on. totally accurate.
but if you got the brickfoot-itis, isn't the supertech full synthentic about the same price for 5 or so quarts at walmart? i remember a bunch of people posting it, and supertech i believe has the same API specs and breakdown of other oils. haven't used it yet, but for the same price at walmart and higher durability...
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what other brand of oil advertises 25,000 mile drain intervals?
none. cuz all the others realize its a stupid concept to leave oil in a car for that long....and jsut change the filter...if you keep changing just the filter you're going to be taking oil out as well...
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for the daily commuter with no WOT, rock on. totally accurate.
but if you got the brickfoot-itis, isn't the supertech full synthentic about the same price for 5 or so quarts at walmart? i remember a bunch of people posting it, and supertech i believe has the same API specs and breakdown of other oils. haven't used it yet, but for the same price at walmart and higher durability...
Well, yes it is true that walmart has some cheap synthetic oil. To be honest, I don't know much about that oil. The reason being that when you buy oil, the difference between synthetic and dino is nothing compared to the difference in oil addative packages put into the oil. My point is that a good dino oil with a well proven and excellent addative package is better than a full synthetic with a crappy addative package.
To fully understand what I am talking about you must understand what a synthetic oil is and the difference, so go to the FAQ oil question page and read my post about it.
You'll notice I mention addative packages. Oil by it's self is really bad for your car, todays cars are ment to have all of these oil addatives in them. For instance, one addative is used to make the oil be able to suspend carbon, once this addative is used up, the oil can no longer suspend the carbon, and you form sludge and carbon build up through out the engine. Most know this is bad. But I think you get the point that the addative package is very important, sometimes more important than the oil it's self.
That being said, I'll say this agian, a good synthetic oil can last you a long time, and that is the only advantage to a synthetic oil, assuming the addative package can handle that long.
what other brand of oil advertises 25,000 mile drain intervals?
This is true, but look at WHICH oil they are claiming that for. It is common practice to use deisel engine oil when bragging about how long an oil can go. Why use a deisel engine? If you have ever driven a manual deisel, you know they redline somewhere around 3,500-4,000 RPM and generally cruse around 1,000-1,500 RPM, and sometimes even lower.
So what does this have to do with oil? Well, the higher the RPM the more stress you are putting on the oil. By stress I mean thermal load, the oil must soak up more heat at higher RPMS and there is an increase in friction stess (yes, they are related). In other words the more stress the quicker everything will break down and shorter the life of your oil. Basically, milage is a bad way of detrmining if oil is bad or not. You should look at the number of revolutions the engine has gone (infact this is what the 2006 civic does) and the load put on the engine (this contributes to carbon blow by which is then suspended in the oil).
So diesel engines put far less stress on oil, this is why most diesel engines can go twice as long on oil as gas engines. Diesel engines also have far lower standards for oil because the load (or stress on the oil) is never quite as high.
So you can see where in a deisel car/truck that does mostly highway, you can make pretty much any good synthetic oil last about 25,000 miles. A gas engine could not do that, I would feel safe running that oil about 10,000 miles, but would still get it tested just to make sure.
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