I think the computer considers other factors such as the number of times you cold-start the engine.

 

maybe it's the weather where you live too. I dunno. Just weird to me. I was at 50% around 2500mi

 

Mine turned ti 90% at 1012 miles with normal driving. (CHANGED THE FILTER ONLY @ 600 MILES)From the numbers it appears 10% loss for every 1000 miles...Little better for highway and a little worse for city. Your % may vary...THUNDER

 

calm down. its NOT weird at all.

my first oil change on the fit was at almost 8k.

and guess what? i do a lot of highway driving, about 75-85% of the time.

you on the other hand do a ton of city driving, hence why it takes you no time at all to run your oil life down.

you never take it past 5k? thats amusing, considering that you have 'modded' your fit. not trying to flame, but its ironic.



people, the bottom line is this: honda introduced this to take the guess work out of maintenence. and everyone here is still making it super compicated! synthetic oil? for what? is your fit supercharged or turboed?
no? well you can add syn oil as another thing to the list of unnecessary things to do to your fit and to waste money.

and all you joes changing it at 2k or whatever....yeah good luck. you may not HAVE to follow ANYONE'S directions, but when you are arrogant enough to think you know the car better than honda its just plain ignorant.

 

AH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


i forgot one thing:


MOST dealers are pretty much useless when it comes to maintenance.

stop scratching your head when you go in and they tell you to change it at 3k or 5k.

when they start talking about "your 30k service" or "your 50k service" its total bullschnit.

READ your manual. if you pay for your fit online through honda financial services, you can print out the effing meanings of all the service indicators. i can't tell you how many times i've had to go to honda themselves and tell them:

:"NO, i DON'T need this, because its not TIME yet!!"

dealers are there to make money foremost, and to help you second.

educate yourselves people.

 

so bottomline... wait til your @ 15% oil life?

 

wait until your car starts reminding you to change the oil with the little yellow wrench everytime you keep turning your car on.

you can let it go as low as 15 or 10%, but if you read the manual, your oil life is actually slightly lower than that.

for example, at 10% oil life, you actually have about 5%. (i bet i just opened up pandoras box with this one.)

 

well by the time I get my oil changed it will probably be around 10-15%. I dunno if it can go down from not driving for 2 weeks. All I know is the day I get back, I'll get one from Honda using whatever they normally use. 5W-30 or whatever is fine.

 

HAHAHA.. from what all of you said, I must be driving like a granny (I have been lnown to drive 'SAFE'...) I am at 90% with 1000 miles, and I do 90% city driving... HAHAHA... damn, I can't wait to change the oil...

When we got the car, we went out and bought all the fancy stuff...

then after reading some info here, I relaize I should wait 1-3 months before waxing the car....

then after reading some more, then I realized I should change the oil with synthetic on the 1st couple changes.....

And now I gotta wait til 15%??? that's a yr from now... HAHAHA.. When will the waiting end??? =)

Thanks all for all the info.. definitely benefitting from this forum.. I am doing the horn replacement tomorrow (with the stock Accord) =)

 

First off, let me state that I'm not saying the maintenance minder schedule is wrong.

But thinking that a manufacturer recommendation is the "best" schedule is kinda naive, too. Engineers are continually trumped by marketing and accounting. Service intervals may be stretched to make a car seem more maintenance free as long as that doesn't make for more warranty payouts. Lighter oils may be speced to eeke out a tiny bit more mpg where a heavier oil might provide more engine protection in certain conditions (very hot climates or heavy loads for instance). Unfortunately, none of use were in the meetings where these desicions were made.

Previously it was manufacturers pushing the 3k oil change interval. Then Toyota had oil sluding issues in the Camry. And more recently VW had sludging issues in the 1.8T in part because they didn't recommend/require synthetic oil. Obviously these manufacturers missed the boat with their official recomendations.

Short of used oil analysis, there's no way to know what's really going on with your oil. The maintenance minder is just an attempt to come up with a lowest common denominator.

Synthetic oil can be seen as a waste of money, or an inexpensive bit of insurance. When it comes down to it, you pay your money and take your chances.

 

Why the 3rd change? I put synthetic in my new 04 Civic after the first 5K miles and now it has 93K miles on it.

There is no study that indicates switch early is bad nor switch later is good.

 

Ok well here are my pics. 3,667miles at 70%

 

I'd say it has more to do with constant stop and go. Weather is a factor too, more specifically the cleanliness of the air. Since you ride 100% city there is nothing wierd about needing an oil change sooner than most of us.

 

One thing that is not mentioned is time.
As a cyclist and a guy who rides a motorcycle my Fit sees very little use in the warmer months.
I only put on about 1100 miles from April to September. I changed the oil at 3000 miles as it was 7 months old. And the dealer kept calling to bring it in as my location (Canadian prairie) can have some pretty extreme hot or cold temps.
So Honda recomends changing the oil every 6 months regardless of what the gauge says or the amount of miles.
6 months or 15%, whichever comes first.

 

makes sense. November 27th will be my 6 month mark, and I'm at 20%. Total sense.

 

on my last 08 fit i got it to go almost 10k before it hit 15% ... i am hoping my 09 will since i am still breaking it in. well ill post once 15% shows up on my New one.

 

i usually don't even read the ask.com type of q&a sites, but this one seemed to have a pretty good response:

How does the Honda maintenance minder oil life indicator work? - Yahoo! Answers

by "honda guy":
"the maintenance minder uses the same information that the programmed fuel injection system uses in its calculations for the fuel injection to determine how the vehicle is being used. Those calculations are used to forecast when the oil should be changed based on how hard the oil is being asked to work to lubricate the engine under the varying engine conditions.

the primary factors that affect the engine oil life are:
engine temperature
engine load
mileage driven
trip duration
vehicle speed
and
engine speed

the lower the engine speeds at the percent of time the engine is spent at lower engine speeds with light loads the longer the oil can last.
under higher speed, higher temperature and heavy engine loads (going up hills, using the air conditioning etc) the more frequently the engine oil should be changed. All of these factors are calcculated using the engine sensors for the fuel injection and then the life of the oil is forecast based on how you are using the car.

before this system the owners manuals called for oil and filter changes every 5000 miles under most circumstances. Honda has a thing for the environment and they believe that the oil on most cars is changed prematurely and creating too much hazardous waste and using too much of our natural resourses as a result. So they went to the mileage minder system.

Of course, we won't know until many miles down the road if the system is the best maintenance schedule for your car in the long term because we don't have a long term history on engine wear to go by. Honda started using the system in 2006. If you're not comfortable with your car telling you when you should change your oil then go by the 5000 mile recommendation of the previous models that did not have this system. I do. The reason I do is that the system can predict the breakdown of the additives but it can't tell if the oil has captured a lot of dust and dirt that can cause engine wear. I live in a dry dusty environment so I go with the 5000 mile oil changes.

hope that helps"

 

Do you mind starting a thread on how you will change out your horn. If it involves a lot of electrical stuff I probably won't do it, but if it's a simple install, I may consider it. In that case a thread would be helpful. Thanks!

 

the last vw i owned, and the current one that my wife owns use synthetic oil, and it gets changed every 10k, with no record of sludging in any reviews or reports.

the 1.8t was an accident always waiting to happen.

lowest common denominator it is. if there were a ton of hondas running around with issues because of it, i'd be worried.

but there isn't. and honda hasn't really had a bad maintenence track record like a lot of other manufacturers. not perfect of course, but good enough for them to earn the rep that they have.

follow the minder, and don't overcomplicate your life.

 

What if you only put 5000 miles per year on the car. Do you recommend that I should still wait for the maintenance minder? It could be a year before the oil hits 15%.

Thanks