Oil Changes & 10,000 mile maintenance
 

This is probably a stupid question, but as my 2004 Civic is my first car and I don't know much about maintenance...

I brought the car in for oil changes at 3,000 and 6,000 miles, and I'll bring it in again soon for 9,000. I know I also have to bring it for maintenance at 10,000 miles.

Now, should I have the maintenance done at the same time as the 9,000 mile oil change? Have the oil change done at 9,000 and then bring it again at 10,000? Or even have it at the same time as the 12,000 mile oil change?

Thanks for the help.

Just wait until 10k to get it changed.

you should wait at least 5000 miles between oil changes.

also next time you buy a car, dont change the factory oil at 3000 miles. factory oil comes with a high concentration of soluble moly, which helps the breakin. wait 5000 miles for that.

I saw that in the manual (7500 actually, it said, to get the first oil change), but I talked to my mechanic and he said get the first oil change at 3,000.

Also, I've been using 93 octane fuel, as he said he wouldn't even put 87 in his lawnmower because it's that bad... I see people at this forum said the complete opposite is true.

Hmm...

3000 is too early IMO because of the moly factor. and he probably said 3000 because there is still the common misconception that 3000 is the "norm". unfortunately it is hard for people to understand that oil changes can be made in much larger intervals, even as high as 15,000 miles with some synthetics.

and the 93 vs 87 octane. i seriously question he even knows what the hell he's talking about. there is no benefit to putting 93 octane in, and in fact, will probably cause quicker carbon buildup and slight loss of power at worst. use 87. and dont listen to this mechanic anymore.

there are far more knowledgeable people than him who have gone over this time and time again. your mechanic is wrong and is obviously unaware of the facts. not that he's a bad guy, but he has been greatly misinformed.

I think I'll start using 87. Thanks.

As far as oil changes go though... while you say it's not necessary to do it before 5,000 miles, can it hurt to do it every 3,000 miles? (Other than hurting the wallet, of course)

plenty of reasons to wait till 5000, the biggest being that the detergents in the oil that break down things like carbon don't take effect until 3,000. SO if you change at 3,000 you won't give the oil a chance to break down the carbon. While we're on the topic, a couple other tips: don't use synthetic oil (big waste of money on a non turbo or not so high compression engine) and use 5w-20, not 10w-30 or anything like that.

If money is no object you could change the oil every week. One wouldn't do that because it's a waste of time and money ergo, let's strike a balance.

Iffy Lube is owned by Pennzoil and they'd love to see you every 3k for more than oil changes if you'd let them. 3k changes is a thing of the past along with toilet paper oil filters.

It's a complete and utter waste of time and money. Go to 5k because the technology is advanced enough to make that a minimum number of miles. 7.5k is also quite doable depending on your application.

The VTec system is a product of design evolution/technology and so is ABS. You don't poo-poo those so why do the same with the better oils.

Huh?

3k mile change is directed at cars with bad compression(not compression ratio) aka fuel blow by, the richer the car runs the more blow by there is because the fuel isnt getting burned up like it should. Fuel gets into the oil and brakes it down. Thats what give oil the dark color over time, fuel. Our cars run around 16:1 a/f, which is very lean and very emissions likeable. which means we can go longer without changing the oil, although i personally wouldnt go more than 5k miles.

Well, yeah, I just didn't want to get that technical. Generally speaking, a car with higher compression ratios have more blow by, look at the BMW M3 that literally eats oil until it is broken in (around 15-20k). But yeah, he's right. My point is simplely that you don't have a performance engine, don't waste money treating like it is a performance engine becasue you won't help it. Honda civic are by design low maintance cars.

JR,

My point was that auto performance technology improves year after year and we've embraced the changes i.e., Vtec and ABS as improvements in the safety, performance and quality of our rides.

Oil is better now than it was a few years ago and we should use the advanced oil technology in the ways it was designed for.

^^^ so are you saying we should use synthetic or saying that we need to use 5w20?

It depends on your app.

Hard driving, high RPMs, track time, lots of freeway driving at normal speeds and a desire for longer drain intervals suggests a quality syn.

Average driver with some blasts and thinner wallet suggests 5k changes with 5w-20 dino.

It's been my experience that with all things being equal, there isn't much of a difference in oil/engine cleanliness with either dino or syn changes at 5k. High temp operations or longer intervals is where syns shine.

Keep in mind that even syn oils are differerent. Some brands such as RL 5w-20 are nearly as thick as M1 5w-30 and M1 5w-20 is thinner at temp than RL. RL has good shear qualities and a solid TBN number but it isn't as easy to find as say, M1.

It all depends on your app but I wouldn't stress too much over it. M1 5w-20 would be my first recommendation if you wanted the benefits of syn without paying boutique oil prices but if you wanted to spend less any of the dino 5w-20's would be fine. Havoline, Motorcraft, Castrol or you pick 'em.

If you are running at max RPMs or high load/temp I'd suggest M1 5w-30 from Wally World in the economica 5 qt jugs.

Make sure you use a good filter such as K&N, M1, PureOne, Amsoil but nothing orange.

I see. We agree then, synthetic isn't going to give much benfit in a stock civic.

To the oil filter list, add Hondas OEM one. Not the rebagded FRAM one, Honda has two filters, one a rebadged Fram filter and one made by someone else I forget who, but the non fram one is good too.

Synthetic oil being a waste of money is an interesting opinion. If you're looking to get 10k miles out of your oil, you'll be much better off with the better additives and better stocks of a GF4 synthetic oil. If you're changing you oil based on the factory service schedule, a good 5w20 dino should suit you just fine.

Well yes, but you have other issues. For instance, some people may only drive 10k per year. I this case, I would not trust any oil for the full 10k becasue the light amount of sulfur in gas can break down and change the pH of your oil, this is bad. SO the 10k oil change thing is still to sketchy for me to try, I stick with 5k untill they out with more sulfur resistant oils, that will be a real long time.

FWIW, the tribologist on s2ki.com changes his oil about every 9 months. He drives no more than 6k miles a year though.

A civic can benefit from synthetic just as any other car. Most synthetics have a higher TBN number, allowing longer oil change intervals, as well as being better than dino oils in several other categories. Of course, the oil change interval being the biggest benefit. With a good synthetic, you can wait a good 10k miles on the civic to change your oil. Valvoline synpower has one of the highest TBN numbers.

I think you're both correct. For the average Civic buyer (not performance wrench heads like us) syn is a waste on economic/performance basis. High load/temp apps where shear factors come into play almost mandates a syn.

But if a driver drives to work on the freeway without hotrodding then a syn might be preferred if you want the longer drains. 10k on syn in these conditions wouldn't be too much of a sweat.

Now I'm a bit different because my civic is driven by the wife unit and she only puts on 9k a year and almost all of that is stop and go where the oil doesn't get warm enough to burn off the cooties. Because of the high TBN number, I'm using RL. The oil gets changed every 6 months but the mileage is rather low. Last time I only accumulated 3.5k miles. I might change to the new M1 5w-20 once they publish their data sheet.

A good synthetic oil can probably go around 1 year in a normal sulfur environment. But in my case synthetic oil is not good enough. In Ohio, we have restrictions on sulfur, but not any way to enforce them, so gas companies take high sulfur gases they can't sell anywhere else and dump it in Ohio. Hence, cats generally go bad here too. On the other side, 94 octane is all over the place and the station just down the road sells 100 octane, leaded or non leaded, so we have some super fuels here. So the idea of going 10k is very dependant on your environment, driving style, and engine, but 5k is a safe bet for me.

True, most people can give a rat's ass about sythetic oil. All they know is every 3k go to the dealer or jiffy lube. It is so ingrained that they don't even think about it.

"Also, I've been using 93 octane fuel, as he said he wouldn't even put 87 in his lawnmower because it's that bad..."

Sounds like a crock of horsey do-do to me! I use only 87 octane for my 01 Civic and it runs just fine. The car is now at 112,500+ miles and runs as good now as it ever has.

As far as oil changes - my first was at 5000 mile. I try for 4000 miles intervals , sometimes a little more. When my timing belt was changed and valve clearance was checked last Monday the mechanic said the engine components underneath the valve cover looked new.

The only oils I have used were conventional oil Castrol , Texaco Havoline , Valvoline (once) and the synthetic blend Motorcraft.

My dads car has 230,000 miles on 87 and no problems.

You put Motorcraft (FORD) oil in a Honda?

motorcraft dino oil is actually a pretty good dino oil.

"You put Motorcraft (FORD) oil in a Honda?"

Why the hell not? :confused: What kind of Honda oil do you recommend?

Honda oil is just rebadged Mobil Drive Clean.

S2000 is right. Next time anyone is at the Honda dealer pick up the "Honda" oil and it says right there on the front that's it's made by Exxon Mobil. It's no secret and there is nothing magical about it.

If I recall correctly, the Ford specs for their 5w-20 oil meet additional approvals that are more stringent than Honda. In other words, the Ford had tougher requirements than Honda but I might be wrong about this.

No I agree. the motorcraft oil is superior to the rebadged mobil drive clean.

Yeah, your right, the Motorcraft oil is different, they use a hydrocrakcing process to refine their oil. All this really is a cheaper way to produce oil of the same grade you normally buy. In fact I think it is actually made by Havoline. They do actually put a tracer into their oils though, that is probably what you are talking about. The tracer allows Ford to see if you are using Motorcraft or other oils. This actually makes Ford owners buy the Motorcraft oil at $4 something a quart to protect their warranty. In the Ford manual it actually says you have to use Motorcraft oil, otherwise your warranty may be void. There is currently a class action law suit against Ford for this because it was found that their oils really had nothing better than normal oil and they where voiding peoples warranties because they didn't use Motorcraft oil. However, the Motorcraft oil is good oil, and people who used lowwer quality oil are simply screwed, but you can by just as good oil at cheaper prices.

Yeah it is better than Honda's oil, just not the best on the market for the price.

This actually makes Ford owners buy the Motorcraft oil at $4 something a quart to protect their warranty.

I bought Motorcraft at the local Wal Mart for like $1.52 a quart for the last few oil changes. Although it seems they are no longer carrying it. The highest I had ever seen it at Wal Mart was like $1.76 per quart.

Yeah there might be better oils but my Civic at 112,500 miles seems to run as good as it ever has so I am not sweating the fact that I have used a lot of Motorcraft for my oil changes.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's bad for your civic, just wondering why you used it, but at 1.52 that isn't to bad. But now that I have to use it, I have found that the only place to buy it as at the dealer, and everything is twice as much at the dealer. But my dad's Accord put 230+k on it on normal Valvoline, the cheap stuff with out a problem.

err?
by reading this i am getting dumber.
thanks.

:_please: ok? care to enlighten us all?

sorry guys, didn't mean to make waves...

i was referring to the earlier exchanges between Jrfish007 and Flashlightboy regarding the use of synthetic oil. most importantly the part about not to "waste money treating your car like it's a performance engine because you wont help it" by using synthetic oils.

S2000man01, you're a smart guy... i've read through many of your posts and oftentimes when there is question you'll support it with a link... but i just love it when folks go back and forth spouting jibber-jabber trying to pass it off as good advice or even fact.

here's some good reading:

http://www.firstfives.org/faq/oil/oilartcl.html
http://www.smartsynthetics.com/artic...nt_quality.htm
http://www.csaa.com/global/faqdetail...57C220,00.html

personally, i stand behind Mobil-1 5w-20 even though my EM2 doesn't have a high-performance engine :)
just my $.02

ok. lol. you should clarify next time you are making "waves" in a particular thread. didn't give us much to go on.


i'm going to go read your links now.

Here is just a sample of what I've read:

Engine Oils and Automotive Lubrication (Mechanical Engineering (Marcell Dekker))

Chevron Delo[R] 400 Multigrade, Chevron RPM[R], Texaco Ursa[R] Premium TDX and Ursa[R] Super Plus meet new Detroit Diesel engine oil specification.(Industry News) : An article from: Fleet Equipment

Why does engine oil pressure vary? (The Answer Column).(Column) : An article from: Fleet Equipment

Engine Oil Effects on Vehicle Fuel Economy: (Selected Papers Through 2001 (Progress in Technology)

The first is a book, the other two are published articles. The difference between these and two of the sites you quoted is a list of websites are obviously biased towards using synthetic oils. Don't get me wrong, what you qouted isn't bad, just biased and there is alot of good info in there. For intstance, synthetic oil was created for jet engines that have high temps and RPMS above 60,000, sound like something I need in my car.

I'm a chemical engineer, we design motor oils, we design the plant to make the oil and gas, we run tests on oil, Chemical Engineers do EVERYTHING dealing with oil, I think I know a little bit about oil. I've taken class specifically on motor oils, had class tests on oils and all the parfins found in oils.

So when it comes down to it, you can use what ever oil you want, one will not give you "better" protection than the other, synthetics can go longer before breaking down, that's about it. You should use caution in buying any oil, there are cheap dino oils and cheap synthetic that won't protect your car that well. A good dino oil is better than a cheap synthetic. So, the question comes to this, how much do you drive? If you only drive say 10k a year, I would not recommend going 10k between oil changes, so why spend money on an oil that can go 10k? Just doesn't make sense. If you drive say 30k a year, then yeah, a 10k oil change makes sense, that's 3 oils changes a year, about 4 months between an oil change compared to dino oil that can really only go about 5k between changes. I still feel better going only 5k between oil changes though because I use high sulfur gas, which changes the pH of oil over time, hence kill anything rubber and makes oil loose it's high temperature viscosity, hence become "thincker" and not as good of a lubricant.

From a chemical engineers standpoint, if you were to use a synthetic oil that can last beyond 10k mi and you drive only 10k mi/yr, then why do you not recommend going 10k mi between oil changes?

Not that this applies to anyone, but my 2001 Civic Owner's Manual suggests a 10k mi maintenance interval for oil changes under normal driving conditions... and a 5k mi interval for severe. With this in mind, a synthetic would surely fit the bill and perhaps extend the severe interval to 10k mi.

If that's true than maybe you should consider using something other than a petroleum-based oil :)

the old castrol syntec commercial comes to mind
no "rubber" = less hi-temp viscosity breakdown

lol, rubber is loose term, there are over a hundered types of rubber. Here is the short version though, 15-20 years ago there was a huge difference between synthetic and dino oils. Reason is because dino oils where manufactured in a certian way that was ineffecient in seperating things like parfins from motor oil. However, technology has advanced, and process like hydrocracking have reduced the amount of contaminates in dino oils compared to 10 years ago, so a GOOD dino oil can protect just as good and almost as long (given the proper addatives are in it) as a middle grade synthetic oil.

Well, the thing about sulfur applies to any oil, dino or synthetic. Sulfur make what we call SOx and there is also a side product called NOx, when these get into the oil (via engine blow-by), they break the oil down, and it's time based more so than milage. So once most oils get this stuff into the system, they have a certian life span. In general synthetic last longer than dino oils in this respect, but agian that change for different grades of oil.

So, keeping that in mind, notice that I live in Ohio, most people don't know that Ohio actually gets crappy gas (high octane, but high sulfur content), we also have one the highest contents of sulfur oxides in the air than any other state (Ohio is one the nations leaders in coal fired power plants) so I also bring Sulfur in through the air. So this means I intorduce more sulfur into my oil than most people, so there is no way I would go one year on the same oil becasue synthetic oil breaks down after about 9-10 months here and dino after about 7-8 months (I've actually done the testing myself in my lab :) with a Mass Spectromiter) Now if you want to go 1 year and only drive about 10k a year, and don't live in Ohio, I would recommend getting your oils composition checked. There are kits you can buy to see how much more life your oil has.

This means oil life depends on the region you live in. If you live in Ohio, bad idea to keep your oil for a year, if you live in say Florida, you may be able to go 10k and one year easily. I have gone 10k in one year on Royal Purple, and tested it, the oil turned out to be okay after that time, but I stopped using it becasue the price went from $4.50 per quart to $6, which no longer made it ecconomical for me considering I can buy a decent dino oil for almost a third of that and change it twice as often.

Now keep in mind that you should not run your oil to limit, if these kits say you can go anouther 5k, don't go exaclty anouther 5k, change it in about 4.5k. In engineering, we like to keep a saftey factor of 10% to the limit. So if you know by testing that oil can last you exactly 10k and one year, change it every 9k and about every 11 months. You could get a high sulfur tank of gas and easily shorten the life of you oil. Sorry to drag on, but this basically summerizes what I've said in a bunch of posts into a single post.

In the end, you can use what ever oil you want and change it how ever often you want, but I think if you want to go long intervals, you need to do reasearch and find out the limit before accidently taking it to far and use a top end synthetic like Mobil-1 or Royal Purple just to name a couple.