By the way, as far as the oil for the CVT goes - yes, at this time, I would only use Honda's product. As far as I know there aren't any other products that claim to be suitable.

 

Of course on one level it's a marketing gimmick. Honda wants you to buy Honda products, they want to encourage you to service your vehicle at Honda Dealerships.

But it still boils down to me to value vs. risk, and quality. By most accounts, Honda products for their vehicles are at least of good quality. You can probably buy independent or alternate brands, but if you get the higher quality stuff, you'll be paying as much or more than what you would for Honda products. No savings there.

Listen, I "could" buy a fuel additive at The Dollar Store. But I ain't putting that stuff in my tank. Even if it's perfectly good and safe.

If I invest a whole lot of time and effort into finding alternate products that "work" or are good enough...or even better, could I choose to buy them and use them? Certainly.

But really? Over the lifetime of the vehicle we are probably talking a very minimal amount of savings. Why bother?

Used or New, we usually invest 10-20 thousand dollars or more, into vehicles the caliber of The Honda Fit. Why risk anything to save a few dollars?

 

just use the honda coolant and be over with. wtf

 

That's a reasonable point of view however a new or low-mileage low-age second hand car is not really an "investment." It continually goes down in value, and fast. By the time its time to change the coolant, at about 120,000 miles, or 3 years old, a Honda Fit is already worth less than $10,000. And using Honda Coolant instead of Zerex Asian Blue is not going to make the value go down any less than if Honda type 2 was used,

I think knowledge is valuable. I did not feel that all the on-line research I did regarding coolant was a waste of time. I learned an awful lot about all the different types of coolants for different cars,.Zerex Asian blue was about US $16 at O'Reillys. Honda type 2 was about $25 at Honda dealer. I saved $9, And my "investment" has the same market value no matter which coolant I use. Would using Honda type 2 enable the car to last longer? No-one is going to say "you used Zerex Asian blue instead of Honda type 2, I don't want to give you that much $ for the car and actually have that work for them..Perhaps they might say: you used prestone silicate coolant, it's the wrong coolant, I don't want to give you that much $ for the car, That might be a buyer's effective bargaining chip. But if they said "you used Zerex Asian instead of honda type 2"? I doubt that would get them very far. I would come back with "it is p-HOAT technology, same as Honda Type 2, explain why, showing how much research I did before doing any service, and how knowledgeable I was about proper maintenance, and that would bring the market value up, not down.

The difference between honda type 2 and zerex asian could conceivably slightly affect the service life of the engine, radiator, and heating system parts.but what's the worse case scenario?