[Maritime]

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.

 

[Maritime]

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.

 

[Maritime]

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.