Hey guys, just wanted to give you a heads up that I do think Honda screwed up royally with the ELD. I say this as my first replacement battery (Advance Auto Gold line) went almost right near the 2 year mark. I still have the battery and noticed higher than normal internal resistance, had issues starting then eventually it just petered out entirely.
Second battery replaced with a Walmart mid grade and noticed it's already starting to have issues no greater than a year in.

I've noticed the car will "disengage" the alternator so much so that the car will quite literally almost cut out sometimes after a weak start. (Car starts weak, ELD is in effect and charging is deactivated, cycling way too much and pretty consistently the car almost dies completely, ABS/TC lights on - voltage codes, absolute travesty of design).

Now before we go blaming Honda, I understand this is an EPA issue, Honda is just complying to get emissions down... but it is quite literally destroying these batteries. These lead acid types are NOT to be deep cycled and by the looks of it, Honda's parameters for deactivation of charging the system are setup so it quite frankly doesn't actually have any intelligent design, just uses a "load detection" system and by no means an accounting of battery IR, real charge, voltage drop, etc. and is clearly too elementary to keep batteries in good condition. I've unplugged the load sensor entirely. It's just not worth it and quite frankly doesn't belong anywhere except in the trash can fwiw. Running with the load sensor unplugged I am at 14.65v, beautious.

That being said I have another qualm. Oils. I used to run 0w20 Mobil 1 EP exclusively but did some research and noticed cam wear accelerated and a noisier engine altogether with this water-like oil after 60 or so thousand. I've since found w30 to be a better choice providing better film strength and the wear over time has not been the same since, almost 50,000 since switching. This is my personal experience, YMMV, but worth noting keeping these things going. I'm at 230k+ and don't see any signs of stopping. I understand some GM engines had issues with thinner oils and TSBs stated using w40s as a "fix". Stellantis (Dodge, Jeep, Mopar) seem to doing better on the w30 - w40s as well (regardless of their engines still wanting to eat themselves...) Just thought I'd share. Happy thanksgiving y'all.

 

My recollection is that the GM engines are defective because some surfaces aren't smooth enough and burn out from the friction. Going to a thicker oil covers up the problem so that GM doesn't have to replace all those engines. Nothing to do with oil really.

 

Agreed. See:

From everything I have read regarding the Honda Fit, the 0w-20 oil is (generally) not a problem.

If you're in the (guesstimated) 1% of the population who operate your Fit in severe conditions -- race car stuff, extreme Death Valley summer temperatures, prolonged idling -- you may be better served with a different oil.

Whenever someone reports a problem that they attribute to the manufacturer-recommended oil, my first question is always "what is your oil change interval?" I am confident that clean 0w-20 is better for the Fit than any brand or weight of dirty/old oil.

Regarding the battery, modern cars seem to have a lot of parasitic loads. In the case of the Fit you have a 12v battery that is probably a bit smaller than it should be and a charging system that may not quite charge as much as it should and many folks have problems. If, like me, you don't drive the car every day, the cheap/reliable/simple solution is to use a battery minder.

 

Honda has been using ELDs and variable-voltage alternators for decades; at least since the late 80's. It's not some new EPA mandate. If anything, the battery-terminal-mounted sensors are what's new. Blame the PCM programming and/or defective sensors.

 

@Drew21 You must be reading my mail. I just watched this last night and bookmarked it of the forum.

 

I have never heard of anyone seriously suggesting 60k mi. intervals for oil changes. Years ago, BMW or M-B told new car buyers that their cars came with Mobil 1 and the oil was good for 100k mi. One or two people in lunatic asylums believed them.

 

So ,, just based on 40 years of building cars (Track addict here... ) Sorry to start the fire... I would never use Mobile 1 in any engine I cared about.
Mobile 1 has POOR resistance to losing viscosity due to temperature. (I've just seen too many roached race engines from mobile one take it as you will.)
Porsche recommends Mobile one, of the other owners I know NONE of them use mobile one we all learned the hard way. Put 5K on mobile 1 in moderately hard environment and send it off to speed diagnostics, you'll find the viscosity will likely have dropped. GM is having all the issues because their onboard oil minder usually results in 15k oil change intervals, it's why they have so many issues with timing chains, and general cam and lifter failure, and the DOXES oil they recommend is not even synthetic.
change the oil by 4000 and the engine will last way way longer. Remember factory oil change intervals are to get to the end of the warrantee not the life of the vehicle.

Side comment.. Name any vehicle Stellantis made before the takeover of dodge that didn't have engine issues,, Fiat & Alpha prime examples. Same issues happening on Dodge as they move designs from their Eu brands to the US cars. They don't jump in and drive 80 mile commutes in rush hour big city traffic. 10 mile commute is more normal for them.

 

Good catch on GMs.

Drew I am running the larger 51R. This shouldn't be happening for this grade of battery. The fact that it still tries to disengage alternator after a slow start due to battery low output was more what I was pointing towards. That's unacceptable and a grade A battery killer. EPA is ultimately to blame. The government isn't engineers they just say here's the requirements try or die in essence.

Also I understand most people generally don't get into the details about such stuff to hit that 550k mile mark. I'm not concerned with that. Most cars, at least here in the states are under cared for. Billions of miles are given up due to lack of care and a little bit of R&D. The w30 and w40 DOES in fact provide better film strength according to the guys over at BITOG. I want 550k out of my car, not 200, not 300. Play for keeps.

Start the fire BY ALL MEANS. This is good info and partly why I started the thread. I don't think I'll be using Mobil 1 ever again after this. What are you running normally or would you recommend for a higher-affordable oil for the daily driver?

 

 

An L15, just not one normally found in a Fit:
The real damage is on the crank bearings, around the video's 29 minute mark.