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.
why because its synthetic? thats not a good enough reason. Cars that have 500k+ miles on the original motor used conventional oil, not synthetic. Most good mechanics here say they will not recommend synthetic because it does not stick to the metal like conventional does. So every time you let the car sit for more than a day, you are dry starting it. if you dont believe me, get both types of oil, two metal gears, and dip one in each oil and then hang them in the air. come back tomorrow and look at the difference.
blah blah blah...same argument over and over. There is no way to prove anything by arguing because there are too many variables involved besides oil. One person can change his/her synthetic oil every 25k and have his/her car last 200k, whereas someone with conventional oil can change it every 3k and have the car last 50k.
I have done 10k on Amsoil with no problems, but did not have it tested. It was a little worn by looking at it and will probably stick to 7500 mile changes. That is because the 5-20 is less miles than some of the other long lasting stuff.
All you guys "attacking" him should back off. Some oils are "designed" to go 25k. Whether or not that works, is yet to be seen. Better safe than sorry is a good approach, but that does not mean that the long intervals are bad. Shit, we all know that conventional oil can go 4-5k, yet all the stealerships want you in every 3k. Is it worse if someone waits until 5k? We just don't know. We just go on theory. In fact, I've heard of military vehicles lasting 200k on no oil changes, just changing the filter and adding some extra oil to top off.
Last edited by robbclark1 : 07-14-2008 at 05:08 PM.
i'll post results from oil analysis on the amsoil that's in my car. anytime i drive the car it's spirited and this oil has some track time with only more to come.
Amsoil has done all the test you are talking about....Amsoil.com. They also did a test comparing other oils...Valvoline was the worst
But amsoil often is not tested by independent testers because the company does not participate in some overarching oil consortium.
One of the best places to get info is here. There are plenty of oil analyses in the forums. http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/
And andy's oil analysis should be good indicator of what amsoil can do/not do, but the results should be used with caution given that there are few stock parts on Andy's motor, making it difficult to compare to a relatively stock D17.
I have been in fleet maint. for the last 24 years, working for a utility company that owns around 1500 vehicles in all shapes and sizes. We maintain from small cars to over the road tractors, plus a bunch of off road equipment. We bought about twenty medium duty trucks starting in `96, all the exact same trucks. We tried using AMSOIL in one of these trucks just to see how it would work. We considered this vehicle to be broken in before using Amsoil, so off we went. We had to use a Amsoil bypass filter kit, which had to have the filters replaced every 7500 miles, which held six quarts by themselves. This is on a normally 30 quart system..... see where I`m going with this? We were always adding a chunk of fresh oil to make the claimed 30,000 mile oil change by AMSOIL. If that was`nt enough, the engine started leaking oil out of every nook that a engine could. Quart after quart went into this engine, using more oil than twenty trucks combined....indeed. We got away from that program, and never looked back. I do say that AMSOIL makes some great products, this just did not work for us.
What does this have to do with Honda`s.... not a damn thing. I`m just saying that things are not always as they seem. From what I`ve seen and heard about "some" syn. oils, to try and run a motor for 25,000 miles between changes is really asking for trouble. I`m not dissing syn oil, it does have it`s place, just don`t buy into every bright idea that comes along to try and save a few bucks in the long haul.
I have been in fleet maint. for the last 24 years, working for a utility company that owns around 1500 vehicles in all shapes and sizes. We maintain from small cars to over the road tractors, plus a bunch of off road equipment. We bought about twenty medium duty trucks starting in `96, all the exact same trucks. We tried using AMSOIL in one of these trucks just to see how it would work. We considered this vehicle to be broken in before using Amsoil, so off we went. We had to use a Amsoil bypass filter kit, which had to have the filters replaced every 7500 miles, which held six quarts by themselves. This is on a normally 30 quart system..... see where I`m going with this? We were always adding a chunk of fresh oil to make the claimed 30,000 mile oil change by AMSOIL. If that was`nt enough, the engine started leaking oil out of every nook that a engine could. Quart after quart went into this engine, using more oil than twenty trucks combined....indeed. We got away from that program, and never looked back. I do say that AMSOIL makes some great products, this just did not work for us.
What does this have to do with Honda`s.... not a damn thing. I`m just saying that things are not always as they seem. From what I`ve seen and heard about "some" syn. oils, to try and run a motor for 25,000 miles between changes is really asking for trouble. I`m not dissing syn oil, it does have it`s place, just don`t buy into every bright idea that comes along to try and save a few bucks in the long haul.
were these trucks that normally didn't see synthetic oil? if so, then there's no doubt about why they started leaking everywhere.
Yes Sir, that was the only truck that we tried syn. oil in. The rest of that story was, the driver of that truck was a AMSOIL dealer. He drove my dept. head nuts to get him to try it, telling him how much the company could save on oil changes and labor in the long haul. I would actually catch that driver in the drive through wash bay, steaming off the engine to try and hide the oil leaks. We kept extra cases of that oil on the truck because every time you filled up with fuel, it was always one or two quarts going in. That truck had an ongoing oil change, because of leaks or burning of it. To be honest, we probably would have never had to pull the plug on the motor to change the oil because if tested, it would most likely always come back as good because of the constant adding of new oil.
We change oil in everything at 5000 miles now. I can honestly say that we have never had a oil related breakdown of any kind in all the years I`ve been there. We have always used a 15-40 oil in everything, but now we are using some lighter stuff in some of the newer cars and small sport utes.
The key to engine life is staying on a hardcore maint. program. Use the type of oil that the maker recommends and stay on it. You can never have too fresh of oil, if you feel better about changing it before they say to, then do it.
I encourage everyone to read Amsoil website to answer your filter 25k miles concern.
I'm not trying to rattle cages..I just wanted to try it out and share with you all. I'll go one year on the oil seeing that I don't drive 25k miles in a year...more like 13k miles. The filter system above is for big trucks. I'm just using the normal Amsoil filter that's good with the one year or 25k miles. It's supposed to filter up to 1 micron...We'll see. They also say that the color of the oil has nothing to do with the viscosity....Please read their Q&A...it will clear up some of the confusion. Sorry for causing waves in this forum...
