Seems most people have a maintenance minder telling them to replace their oil at around 7500 miles. I stretched mine to nearly 8K to coincide with a tire rotation with new tires. I'm a bit skeptical about 8,000 miles and 40% oil life.

 

I often drive 15-16k km per year, and I'm always around 30-40% after a year. As said in the manual, I change the oil every year!

 

Mine does about the same.

The manual does state that a display of 40% = real time 40-31%. I change it when it displays 20-30%, depending on how busy/lazy I am or the weather.

 

I've noticed that with mostly local driving, the "Oil Life" calculation is shorter, say 0% at 10K Miles. But with mostly long distance driving, the calculation is much longer, say 40% at 10K Miles. Regardless of what's displayed, I greatly dislike running the oil past 10K Miles.

 

You can always get a rag and go look at your oil on the dipstick.

 

Yeah. Seems excessive.

 

That helps gauge your oil life, how?

 

How dark the oil looks.

 

You can’t always base oil health off of color. If you know what color it started out as you can more so but many synthetics get dark very quickly. The oil I use gets black very quickly because of the additive package. Someone who didn’t know that might pull the stick snd think it’s nearing the end of its life but it’s only got 1k miles on it.

8k miles at 40% sounds like you might do a lot of highway driving. My Fit would hit 0-15% around the 10k mark. The minder will adapt to how the car is driven. Lots of idling and stop and go will shorten the interval.

 

As mentioned...the color of the oil is definitely not a reliable gauge of oil life...it can pretty much let you know if it's freshly changed or not if the car is bought used...the smell can let you know if it's been cooked in an overheated engine...if there is coolant or moisture in it. That's pretty much it.

Used oil is always dark. A lab test of the oil would be the only reliable way to gauge the life...not the color.

 

It does some highway...but through winding mountain roads...and some interstate stretches. It spends time in the upper revs frequently to pass folks in the short passing zones here...so for that reason I'm not comfortable with maintenance minder suggestions.

Not much stop and go. Minimal idling.

 

I now ignore the maintenance minder and change my oil every 5K miles. My 2017 Fit blew up just over warranty. Honda told me to get F-ked, but that's a different story. Anyway I can't seem to see why a car I bought new with less than 100 miles on the odometer blew up unless it was a manufacturing defect or I caused undo wear following the maintenance minder recommendations for oil change. Many times I was at 8-9K when it said it was time for an oil change. It seemed like too many miles, but thought the engineers must be right. The maintenance minder is based on how one drives their car/ driving conditions. Now with the replacement junk yard engine it gets oil changes every 5K

 

My ex had the previous generation and did oil changes at 15% or less. She drove it fairly hard, as well. She got rid of it at around 150k, and it wasn't burning oil or anything. For my own...that's a bit too long to wait.

Some guys here gave hundreds of thousands of miles. It would be good to know what their oil change intervals look like.

Mine purchased with almost 70k miles burned oil for a minute until it got topped off with something decent (used car dealer changed the oil with who knows what before purchase). I'm using semi synthetic high mileage Castrol GTX which always seems to be on sale around here.