When to service/oil change?

[jzchen]

173xx miles on the ODO, car is saying 8 weeks to go. Go figure.

[jzchen]

With 178xx miles, the car is now saying 4 weeks until service is due. With last service Jan 25, I must say that at least for our car it is not exactly based on time. I suspect it's a combination of the two, time and mileage. darthpuppy you must drive roughly 7250 miles every 6 months, so the mileage set by Honda matches up perfectly with the 6 month time frame that you note. I am under the belief that the car wants tire rotations every 7250 miles, and an oil change every 10k miles, or 1 year, whichever comes first. I plan on getting only the tires rotated when service due comes, and will see if it moves back A and 0 like it did last time. I wouldn't be surprised if it set it 4 months to January, or it's estimate of when 10k miles since last oil change was done.

[darthpuppy]

I think you might be right. About 2 weeks ago, mine started asking for oil change, air filter change and tire rotation in 4 weeks. That prompt started almost to the day that my car turned 18 months old. I'm now at 20,200 miles and will be a little past 21,000 at the time it requests. So it could be time or it could be miles as you note my mileage seems to synch with the 6-month intervals. So my experience is probably not the best to use to assess.

Your experience suggests it is more mileage based.

[darthpuppy]

BTW- The air filter change was easy to do. And now there are a couple youtube videos on it to provide guidance.

[jzchen]

Honda has nice online links to the service items here specifically 2018 that I selected. I can't remember if I've already posted a link to these, and my apologies up front if this is a repeat!

Main Items:

http://techinfo.honda.com/rjanisis/cont ... =ownerlink

Sub Items:

http://techinfo.honda.com/rjanisis/cont ... =ownerlink

Here's the link to their complete database:

https://owners.honda.com/servicemaintenance/minder

Of interesting note about oil changes is this quote from the very top of the Main Items page:

If the message ‘‘Maintenance Due Now’’ does not appear for more than 12 months after the display is reset, change the engine oil every year.

I would assume that those who get little mileage, (under the mileage interval), in 1 year would not get a time based warning from this statement.

I am interested in the statement on the next line:

NOTE: Adjust the valves during services A, 0, 1, 2, or 3 if they are noisy.

How does this sound? (Maybe I should get off my lazy butt and just YouTube it I guess)....

[jzchen]

Yesterday I get in the car after a few days of not driving it and it says "Service Due Now". I complain to my wife that she didn't tell me...

I note ODO at 18501 mi it asked for "A 0 1". Needed to drive about a little bit and got it to America's Tire at about 18515 mi. Had them rotate and balance the tires, then reset the 1 before I drove off.

Low and behold service will be due in 4 months. 4 months is monthwise exactly 1 year from the last service I had at the dealer last January. (I was a little nervous all the recall work may have changed the service algorithm, but I am happy to say it has not). Save yourself an early oil change and just have the tires rotated whenever it calls for "1". (We came from a '13 Ford C-MAX Energi which has a 2 year/20k mi oil change, with a 22 mi range. With a 50 mi range this car can go longer/further without an oil change than the 7250 miles or so when it initially asks for one. The indicator should only show 1 at that mileage. (If it were me programming it that's what I'd do).

[darthpuppy]

I was a bit suspicious about the frequency it was asking for oil changes. Considering it takes synthetic oil and the gas engine only runs part time, it seemed to be excessively often. That is really bad programming if it lumps the oil change prompt in every time it prompts for tire rotation. Why bother giving it a separate code if it is going to throw both of them up when one of them is needed? I guess they are trying to give the dealers some extra oil change business as they know owners will get tire rotations elsewhere but might be inclined to let the dealer do the oil change.

[jzchen]

Looks like we may pass 10k miles since last oil change this month, which is roughly two months early from 1 year. The car says 6 weeks left as of last night, and we are about 100 miles from the 10k mi point. I will report what happens as we may finish the 10k miles by early next week....

[jzchen]

Yesterday I drove the car a little and noticed we are nearing 21300 miles. Still says 6 weeks until due. It will be interesting to see how far mileage wise it will go beyond 10k, which I thought was the original demarcation. One year will be this January sometime...