Is 'OIL LIFE' 40% on just over 2,485miles (4,000km) normal?

913 Views 19 Replies 10 Participants Last post by hokiefyd, 4 mo ago

JYOO

Discussion Starter · 4 mo ago

My 4month old 2022 black edition with 9speed trans shows 40% oil life on just over 4,000km (2,485miles)
I haven't done my first oil change yet and just checked the tire pressure and oil life under "maintenance" on instrument cluster for the first time.
So I inflated the tires to 36psi from 33psi (35psi is recommened) and found that the oil life is only 40% left.

Is this normal? What does this "OIL LIFE" mean? Is there a sensor that detects how think the oil is or if the oil level is getting lower than normal?

I barely know anything about car maintenance and it will be much appreciated if you know what that means. By the way, I just installed S-VCM and if the oil change is almost due, I will have to take the SVCM off before taking it to the dealership.

Thank you in advance

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dp0099

· #2 · 4 mo ago

About right. I had 15% oil life at 4000 miles.
The oil life is related to the quality of the oil. With time, mileage, driving habits etc., the oil slowly looses its original lubrication qualities. It is not related to oil level. For oil level use the dip stick.

Reactions: 3

JYOO

Discussion Starter · #3 · 4 mo ago

dp0099 said:
About right. I had 15% oil life at 4000 miles.
The oil life is related to the quality of the oil. With time, mileage, driving habits etc., the oil slowly looses its original lubrication qualities. It is not related to oil level. For oil level use the dip stick.

Thank you!
you explained all I needed to know

Arthur36

· #4 · 4 mo ago

JYOO said:
My 4month old 2022 black edition with 9speed trans shows 40% oil life on just over 4,000km (2,485miles)
I haven't done my first oil change yet and just checked the tire pressure and oil life under "maintenance" on instrument cluster for the first time.
So I inflated the tires to 36psi from 33psi (35psi is recommened) and found that the oil life is only 40% left.

Is this normal? What does this "OIL LIFE" mean? Is there a sensor that detects how think the oil is or if the oil level is getting lower than normal?

I barely know anything about car maintenance and it will be much appreciated if you know what that means. By the way, I just installed S-VCM and if the oil change is almost due, I will have to take the SVCM off before taking it to the dealership.

Thank you in advance

Nothing to worry about. Note that oil change interval (or oil life) is also time related (1 year max). Even if you drive 1000 miles per year oil change will be due at 1 year mark. I bet your car was built 2-4 months before you took delivery and will be due for an oil change in approximately 4-6 months at 4500-5000 miles on the odometer. Oil type (conventional, blend or full synthetic) does not affect MM (maintenance minder) % oil life left.

Reactions: 2

2022PilotTouring

· #5 · 4 mo ago

I'm at 80% oil life with only 608 miles (85% city, 15% highway)

Reactions: 1

JYOO

Discussion Starter · #6 · 4 mo ago

Arthur36 said:
Nothing to worry about. Note that oil change interval (or oil life) is also time related (1 year max). Even if you drive 1000 miles per year oil change will be due at 1 year mark. I bet your car was built 2-4 months before you took delivery and will be due for an oil change in approximately 4-6 months at 4500-5000 miles on the odometer. Oil type (conventional, blend or full synthetic) does not affect MM (maintenance minder) % oil life left.

Thanks a lot for the info. Then I don't have to worry about the oil life or oil change until I return from a long work. 6months from now

JYOO

Discussion Starter · #7 · 4 mo ago

2022PilotTouring said:
I'm at 80% oil life with only 608 miles (85% city, 15% highway)

Ok then mine is perfectly normal.
Apparently, it depends on driving condition/habits and time related and maybe other factors? all at the same time.

2022PilotTouring

· #8 · 4 mo ago

It looks that way, esp. with the amount of short trips each I need to take (~5 miles round trip) 4 days a week with lots of stop/go, which is what I assume is typically referenced as severe driving conditions, compared to HWY, less stress to transmission/brakes/engine (thermal and mechanical,) but more so for wear on the suspension for the highway, esp hitting at high speeds asphalt lips -- on the I280, in NJ, there has been 2 lips on two lanes in a spot I think just before or after the Oranges for at least 8 years the DOT never fixed, anything over 60MPH and your vehicle get impacted hard, most traffic in that area is due to people aware of it slowing for it, but if you didn't know....

Reactions: 2

WiiMaster

· #9 · 4 mo ago

Not sure if this car's Maintenance Minder factors in time for the oil life. I don't think it does. The 5th gen Odyssey (2018+) was the first to have this feature and Honda said they would add it to the rest of the lineup with the next refresh.

But yes, it does consider many different factors. Temperature (both ambient and engine), run time, etc.

Reactions: 1

ls973800

· #10 · 4 mo ago

dp0099 said:
About right. I had 15% oil life at 4000 miles.
The oil life is related to the quality of the oil. With time, mileage, driving habits etc., the oil slowly looses its original lubrication qualities. It is not related to oil level. For oil level use the dip stick.

The oil life monitor doesn't know anything about the oil in the vehicle.

You could be running synthetic, synthetic blend, or any thing else. The monitor does just that, it monitors the engine and how it has been driven and determines the oil life, not the oil condition. Short drives, long drives, never heated up, ran at a constant warmed up condition for 600 miles on a freeway, etc. You could reset the monitor to 100%, drain the oil and put in oil which had been driven for 25000 miles, and the monitor would just start to keep track of the engine as I stated above.

My Pilot likes 10000 mile oil life. I have almost 40000 miles on it now and it has always shown about a 10% decrease in oil life for every 1000 miles I have driven. I change the oil every 5000 miles however and reset the monitor. Pasted below is from a Honda dealership

Q: How does the Honda Maintenance Minder know when the 0% trigger Occurs?

A: The onboard computer system in your vehicle continuously monitors the engine operating conditions such as speed, engine and ambient temperature, time and the vehicle use. The system will count down the vehicles oil life based on these conditions to determine when an engine oil change and maintenance is necessary.

No matter what type or grade of oil you may have used, you would get the same oil life reading if the car had been operated identically with any type of oil. You could be using an oil which may be good for extended oil change intervals but the Honda oil life monitor would not know that, it would only go by the engine operating conditions for that OLM cycle.

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Rico1

· #11 · 4 mo ago

I have not been removing my vcm tuner for oil changes, and never had a problem. Has anyone ever had the service department comment on it?

WiiMaster

· #12 · 4 mo ago

Rico1 said:
I have not been removing my vcm tuner for oil changes, and never had a problem. Has anyone ever had the service department comment on it?

I know people have brought it to the dealership (even while under warranty) and they said nothing (either because they didn't notice or didn't care), and in some cases the dealerships have even unofficially said they know about it and endorse it.

If you have a passive device (ex: VCMTuner I, VCMuzzler II, etc.), it's even harder for them to notice compared to active devices with the more obvious wire to the battery.

The only time I took my Accord to the dealership, it was to get keys made, so I'm guessing they never even looked under the hood to begin with.

hokiefyd

· #13 · 4 mo ago

WiiMaster said:
If you have a passive device (ex: VCMTuner I, VCMuzzler II, etc.), it's even harder for them to notice compared to active devices with the more obvious wire to the battery.

Yes, I have the original VCMuzzler (passive resistor) and there are no visual cues that it's installed with the engine cover on. If you take the cover off and really pay attention to what you're looking at, you might notice it. But with the cover on, it's totally invisible.

Reactions: 1

Maritime

· #14 · 4 mo ago

ls973800 said:
The oil life monitor doesn't know anything about the oil in the vehicle.

You could be running synthetic, synthetic blend, or any thing else. The monitor does just that, it monitors the engine and how it has been driven and determines the oil life, not the oil condition. Short drives, long drives, never heated up, ran at a constant warmed up condition for 600 miles on a freeway, etc. You could reset the monitor to 100%, drain the oil and put in oil which had been driven for 25000 miles, and the monitor would just start to keep track of the engine as I stated above.

My Pilot likes 10000 mile oil life. I have almost 40000 miles on it now and it has always shown about a 10% decrease in oil life for every 1000 miles I have driven. I change the oil every 5000 miles however and reset the monitor. Pasted below is from a Honda dealership

Q: How does the Honda Maintenance Minder know when the 0% trigger Occurs?

A: The onboard computer system in your vehicle continuously monitors the engine operating conditions such as speed, engine and ambient temperature, time and the vehicle use. The system will count down the vehicles oil life based on these conditions to determine when an engine oil change and maintenance is necessary.

No matter what type or grade of oil you may have used, you would get the same oil life reading if the car had been operated identically with any type of oil. You could be using an oil which may be good for extended oil change intervals but the Honda oil life monitor would not know that, it would only go by the engine operating conditions for that OLM cycle.

I get 25K KM between changes on my MM on my 2011. I use full synthetic but that isn't why, 90% of my driving is at a steady 80-90 KPH with no stops for 25 min 2x a day and that is perfect conditions for the oil to last. No short trips, no idling at red lights etc. If you stop and go drive it drops way down faster.

ls973800

· #15 · 4 mo ago

Maritime said:
I get 25K KM between changes on my MM on my 2011. I use full synthetic but that isn't why, 90% of my driving is at a steady 80-90 KPH with no stops for 25 min 2x a day and that is perfect conditions for the oil to last. No short trips, no idling at red lights etc. If you stop and go drive it drops way down faster.

WOW! A little over 15500 miles! Are you actually doing that long of an interval on the oil change? Are you the original owner? I bet you are getting some very good gas mileage also.

Maritime

· #16 · 4 mo ago

ls973800 said:
WOW! A little over 15500 miles! Are you actually doing that long of an interval on the oil change? Are you the original owner? I bet you are getting some very good gas mileage also.

Bought the thing with 75K on it 3.5 years ago. Put VCM muzzler on it about a week after owning it, did timing belt and watched the MM for the first oil change, It took till I had driven the 25K KM and I have done that for every change now sitting at 240K KM 144K Miles. The BS Dealers say about 8K KM (5K Mile) intervals is crap. I put Mobile 1 or similar in my yaris and I did that car 1 X a year for 6.5 years averaging ~35k KM a year for oil changes and I had it from 230K KM till it died of rust @ 490K KM. Never burned a drop of oil and the oil always came out clean. Again that car was all commuting with very little city driving. I work for a huge trucking company and oil Long Haul trucks on full synthetic Diesel oil go 80-100K MILES between oil changes so a little 6 cylinder gas car should be fine at 25K.

hokiefyd

· #17 · 4 mo ago

Maritime said:
The BS Dealers say about 8K KM (5K Mile) intervals is crap...Again that car was all commuting with very little city driving.

To be fair...your use of your vehicle is pretty atypical. Per your account, you do very little city driving and almost all of your miles are steady state highway driving. An interval of closer to 5k miles probably is appropriate for what I'd call a "typical" Pilot driver, who experiences a lot of short trips; waiting in the drop-off line at school or daycare; stops at the grocery store, park, soccer, etc. I'd still advocate in general that folks heed the advice of the maintenance minder, as it may recommend a change prior to reaching 5k miles in some cases. If your statement is about fixed intervals in general, then I agree -- everyone's situation will be different and a fixed number, whatever that number might be, won't be appropriate for everyone.

Of course, one of the reasons for the long oil change intervals on heavy duty trucks, besides their use case of lots of highway miles at relatively low and steady engine speeds, is the sheer volume of oil in their sumps. A Volvo D13 holds somewhere around 40 quarts of oil -- about 10x the average capacity of a passenger car engine. With such a high oil volume, it'll take much longer for that oil to degrade to the point of needing changing. And Volvo's recommended change intervals are between 30k miles and 60k miles, depending on fuel economy (which I think is an interesting way to specify an oil change interval), which is also about 10x the average recommended change interval for many passenger car engines.

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Maritime

· #18 · 4 mo ago

hokiefyd said:
To be fair...your use of your vehicle is pretty atypical. Per your account, you do very little city driving and almost all of your miles are steady state highway driving. An interval of closer to 5k miles probably is appropriate for what I'd call a "typical" Pilot driver, who experiences a lot of short trips; waiting in the drop-off line at school or daycare; stops at the grocery store, park, soccer, etc. I'd still advocate in general that folks heed the advice of the maintenance minder, as it may recommend a change prior to reaching 5k miles in some cases. If your statement is about fixed intervals in general, then I agree -- everyone's situation will be different and a fixed number, whatever that number might be, won't be appropriate for everyone.

Of course, one of the reasons for the long oil change intervals on heavy duty trucks, besides their use case of lots of highway miles at relatively low and steady engine speeds, is the sheer volume of oil in their sumps. A Volvo D13 holds somewhere around 40 quarts of oil -- about 10x the average capacity of a passenger car engine. With such a high oil volume, it'll take much longer for that oil to degrade to the point of needing changing. And Volvo's recommended change intervals are between 30k miles and 60k miles, depending on fuel economy (which I think is an interesting way to specify an oil change interval), which is also about 10x the average recommended change interval for many passenger car engines.

I know I am not typical but the old hard 8k KM - 5K Mile change intervals are not real. They are made up to make revenue at dealers and shops. We have out intervals that far out because Shell saw the writing on the wall and started an analysis program for fleets. Use their oil which is $$ but they analyze the oil and add 10K miles until the oil comes back as not good enough to protect. That has our trucks at 80K Miles and may go to 100K or more. My Honda dealer tells you not to use the MM as it's not for the Canadian Climate and come in at 8K KM on the dot. That's complete BS and I would only do it if I had warranty to worry about, even then Honda has to honor warranty if you follow the MM.

Reactions: 1

Daltongang

· #19 · 4 mo ago

Good read regarding the MM system, how it works. Waiting for the research paper by those that still maintain the 5K oil change.

hokiefyd

· #20 · 4 mo ago

Maritime said:
My Honda dealer tells you not to use the MM as it's not for the Canadian Climate and come in at 8K KM on the dot. That's complete BS...

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