tehCOW

i definatly agree with checking your oil on a regular basis, more so for those who drive their cars hard. when your engine works hard, its bound to burn a little bit of oil

Bass Mechanic

i guess i have a different feeling about my cars than most of you do. sure ill check the oil to see where it is but i lease my cars. as long as the oil light doesnt come on i am not going to give it 1 minute of thought. i know even if it is a little low it will make it to the next oil change. i have never had a honda in the 8 or so i have owned ever run out of oil. as long as there is still oil pressure and no light there has to be enough to in the pan if it continues to pick up pressure.
i only plan to keep the car for 2-3 years anyway. now there is an extreem to this way of thinking which i am not guilty of... i had a friend that buys leased toyotas, he had a 1998 4 runner that he leased and in the 17,000 miles he had it for 2 years NEVER changed the oil. i about shit when i heard that. his responce to me was "hey its a leased car and its under warranty. what do i care" im not quite that bad, ill change my oil when it's required. but im not going to obsess over it as i have more important things going on in my life that need more attention. i run my own business and my car is a write off being a leased car. i dont plan to keep it more than 2-3 years and my next car will probly be the TL again. i usually trade them in right about time to replace the tires. that is 1 less expense i have to worry about.

dom

If you lease then I guess you have a totally different mind set. I bought the TSX and plan on keeping it at least 5 or 6 years so I plan on babying it to maintain its resale value.

What will the person buying it think when they receipts for oil changes every 5,000km's?

I use to change the oil on mt GS-R every 3,000km's (1,875miles). It was an obsession, I've since relaxed on that though.

gogozy

i thought lease car must adhere to regular maintance at dealership?? i am not so sure now....

ClutchPerformer

Well, OF COURSE you don't care about this subject as much as I do. With your tax situation, the car is almost free to you. I, on the other hand, pumped about 80% of my life savings into this vehicle and I plan to keep it for 10+ years. Given the above information, I'm not surprised that you don't care too much about your oil situation. And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with that, either. You don't NEED to care if you're just gonna give the car back when the tires wear out. None of the ill effects will show themselves in the first 30k miles. So relax and enjoy your car. Leave the worrying to me.

fdl

Brad

That's an excellent reminder about different mind sets. Thanks for the reminder.

For me, it's a good reminder to all not to buy used fleet or off-lease motor vehicles. There's no incentive for renters to maintain their equipment as well as an owner since they can dump it at the end of the lease term.

Hmmm. I plan to keep my car for at least 10 years. Let's see, aside from gas, maintence, taxes, smog checks, and insurance, that alone averages $2600-3000 per year if you could average the OTD purchase cost over ten years. Add in all of those other expenses, and it's a healthy penny.

Bass Mechanic

Geeze you guys make it sound like i distroy my leased cars. all i said is im not going to worry about checking the oil and i am not going to do anything different than the regular maintenence as outlined in the manuel. how is that so bad?
im just not going to obsess about it like the rst of you seem to. it's oil, get over it, even if i ran my car the full 7500 between changes like honda says it is not going to hurt anything, honda even says so! i change mine every 3 k like everyone else. but the manuel says to wait n the first change till 7500 so that is what im going to do.
and for the record if it werent for people like me leasing cars there wouldnt be any good used vechicles for people who cant afford to buy new to enjoy.
you guys talk to me like im the bad guy. whats wrong with a lease?
besides who wants to own a depreciating asset? if you want to invest money into somthing buy a house. leasing saves me money so i can invest it into other things that make me money. and as someone already pointed out as a business owner the goverment nearly pays for my car by leasing it.

majormojo

I'm sure you're not abusing your car, but doing regular oil (and other fluid) checks may possibly alert you to a situation that you need to deal with before it's a problem. I have no idea what the tolerance is for the "oil low" light, but they don't call them "idiot lights" for nothing. It's entirely possible that that by the time that light comes on, damage has already been done to your engine.
Well, your leasing company does. They make money by owning depreciating assets and charging people to use them. The buy vs. lease equation has way too many individual variables to really let anyone but you answer "what's wrong with a lease?" However, the bottom line on it is that the leasing company is making money on the deal or they wouldn't be doing it. There's very little that a leasing company does for you that you couldn't do yourself and eliminate their profit - putting more money in your pocket. Owning a depreciating asset isn't really a big deal if the depreciation is expensable. Leasing simplifies the accounting, but generally doesn't result in lower overall costs in the long run. YMMV of course and I'm not saying "leasing is bad". Either way, it still doesn't hurt to check your oil between changes.