I have 6000 miles on a 2014 rdx and the oil change indicator still shows 20 percent. Could the oil change indicator be defective or is this normal.

 

I think mine was about 7k when it it was at 20%. That was at about 11.5 months in. The dealer says 10% or 1 year, whichever comes first. There's nothing wrong with you indicator. It depends somewhat on how much stop and go you do versus suburban/highway driving I think.

 

It is normal.

 

I'd say normal. Mine asks for an oil change about ever 8-9k miles. Synthetic oil lasts longer.

 

This.
all highway miles, without activating vtec(5k-7k RPM) will net you a longer oil life.

all city, stop and go, while actively reaching 7k RPM on a daily basis will make the oil life decrease faster.

the computer uses an algorithm to determine oil life.
The computer DOES NOT KNOW what kind of oil it has. it could be either regular dino or synthetic oil and it will still spit out the same oil life according to how you drive.

stop and go traffic is harder on engine components than highway miles.

 

I'm at 7700 miles, still @ 20% oil life.

 

That sounds about right. As an aside, I don't think the RDX comes with synthetic oil from the factory, does it?

 

This has me thinking... What is the oil filter catching? I assume that you replace your filter with every oil change but with synthetics, you wait longer between changes. Does this negatively affect the car's life with having your oil filter longer? Yes, the oil is better but the oil filter is filtering something from the oil.

 

No big deal. In the old days we used to change the filter every other oil change. It became easier and not much more money to just change the filter every time. That's when we used to change oil every 3,000 miles or so which means the filter was changed every 6000 miles. So this schedule is really not all that much different. With modern engines, air filters, oil filters and oils it has made it not unusual to go 7k to 10k between oil changes. Unheard of 30 years ago.