I did my first Fit oil change last night. The dipstick is impossible to read. All it showed was evidence there was oil in the engine, not how much oil. I resorted to "pour and pray" . . . the manual say 3.5 qts, that's what I put in.

 

I have seen another thread that others have mentioned the issue as well. I have not pull the dipstick to read on my 2017 LX yet. Oil quality reads 80%.

 

 

Yeah....seems automakers, of late, have a stupid plastic piece on the end of the dipstick.....what was wrong with the old school no plastic on stick with either legible lines etched into them or even a notch denoting high and low levels ....am always afeared, being that it's a plastic add-on, that it could eventually come off in the oil pan .... have never had this happen, haven't heard of it happening, but ....why ??? As well, every oil change that's ever been done on my cars (other than DIY) seem to be overfilled.....I'd prefer to be slightly lower but within the "limits".....sorry, am in a pissy mood this a.m. after a shitty night at work

 

And since we're using very lightweight oil, it makes it that much harder to read.

 

It helps sometimes to carefully lay it on a bit of paper towel and see how far up the oil is from the spot on the towel.

My Fit's oil dipstick is far from the least usable dipstick I've encountered. I think that would have to be the transmission dipstick for my motorhome, particularly when changing the transmission fluid (which means pouring the 14 or so gallons of fresh fluid through the dipstick tube). It seems to indicate only that there's some bit of fluid left in the tube rather than show the actual level in the transmission for some considerable time after filling.

 

Same here...

 

I've had little difficulty reading mine, given sufficient light. I really wish it had a cross-hatched surface like my Scion. I'm tempted to use a triangular file and give it one myself.

 

I though I was the only one with this problem

Yes it is a little difficult but I leave it to my mechanic to do the job. 80pesos $4 USA dollars for changing the oil and I bring his all the stuff. A pretty cool deal.

 

After having this "issue" several times, I noted that so long as I only pull the dipstick ONCE, it is very easy to read. I think that the usual method of pulling the stick, wiping it, inserting it, and pulling it again drags some oil up the dipstick tube and allows it to be smeared on the stick, giving false and inconsistent readings. My guess is that the plastic piece acts like a piston and does the pulling of the oil up the tube.

So when I change oil, I run the car a few minutes, shut it off, pull and wipe the stick, reinsert it, then do something else (like clean up the tools and items I used for changing oil). Pull the stick and read it. The stick is then clean down to the point where the actual level is (generally high in the plastic "normal" range).

And of course this works well for routine level checks. Drive the car, let it sit for a while, pull the stick (only once) and read it. Works.

 

DrewE: 14 GALLONS? (56 quarts) poured in through a little tube?

Wow. No Wonder motorhomes are so big.

 

Whoops. I should have said 14 quarts, not gallons. My bad. (I might be off by a quart or so in my recollection...but it's still a fair bit to pour down a little hole.)

It's basically a Ford van chassis with their 4R100 transmission. One really nice feature of that transmission is that it has a drain plug for the torque converter, so a simple drain and fill of the fluid does replace nearly all of it. One feature I did not appreciate was the two different pan sizes (one deep and one shallow), which meant two different possible filters (one long and one short), and of course only the wrong one was in stock at the parts place.

 

OK.
But in both scenario's you present, you are pulling the stick out exactly the same amount of times. The numerical amount is the same. 1st pull, wipe, re-insert-2nd pull- read.

If I'm reading your post right, the only difference is "waiting" after wiping and re-inserting.

 

or how about not starting the car and just pull and read it.

u folks are making a super simple task complicated..

 

Yeah, that was kind of my point.

But I have to say, I've tried the let it sit all night, and then just pulling it and reading it approach.

Still unreadable.

Honda has made a super simple task unduly....nearly impossible.

 

Sounds like a plan.
What about pulling the dipstick out and letting the car sit a few minutes with the dipstick removed? I am changing my oil this weekend. Going to try this.

 

I'm just happy that there is a dispstick, my old BMW had NO dipstick. It was ridiculous to say the least.