I am new to owning my RDX. I have owned Acuras and Hondas before but none had a maintenance minder setup. When it was time the change the oil it was also time to change the filter. Now we have codes A and B where in both you change the oil but for code A you only change the oil and not the filter. For my car that would be roughly 10000 miles between filter changes.

I have a local dealer that charged $120 for oil change and also $120 for both oil and filter change. Seems like it would not make any sense to do just the oil if the price is the same. For the sake of longevity of the engine I would rather change both anyways.

So I am wondering how many actually have just the oil changed without changing the filter?

 

I change oil twice 50% and 0% and filter one time. Oil at costco $38 for 10qt.

 

BTW, if you are worried about engine longevity I would consider changing oil more often especially if you do a lot of short trips as these engines are known fuel diluters. I use 5w-30 also

 

120.00 ? Sheesh. You can buy full synthetic oil for 20-25 dollars and have a good mechanic just charge you labor on it which is usually 20-25 dollars.

 

I change my oil and filter every 5,000 miles. Typically pay about $25 for a 5qt Mobil 1 + $12 for a Mobil 1 at Walmart & it takes about 30 min to do the oil change... as long as you have a couple tools, jacks + jack stands or ramps its pretty easy. The biggest pain is cleaning up spills and getting rid of the used oil.

As a side note, because im paranoid about the fuel in oil situation the Honda 1.5L engines experienced, I send a sample of oil to Blackstone for analysis about every 30k.. So far so good and I have 60k on the car now

 

I didn't even know they change oil without the filter. I just follow the recommended service schedule, so I assume just the oil has been getting changed at A services. The only add on is I get them to change the cabin filter with every service because we have a lot of bad air quality days around here. Maybe I should request an oil filter change as well. I'm still in the "free 2yr/24k service" period but I discovered that it's not really all free since I had to pay for the differential fluid change.

 

What is your viscosity that Blackstone reports?

Blackstone does not measure fuel dilution correctly, if you want accurate measurement you need to use OilAnalyzers kit you can buy on amsoil website.

 

Yeah times have changed and many modern engines say do an oil filter change every other oil change; but changing it every time certainly won't hurt anything. I haven't thought to ask a shop recently what they do these days but most do oil and filter change with each oil change and I can't imagine that they spend time on following whatever each manufacturer says.

I try to be as environmentally conscious as possible and reduce waste wherever I can so I would be all for doing the filter every other oil change, though.

 

Yeah I know $100+ seems to be the norm around these parts now. When I was a dealership mechanic almost 20 years ago, that dealership charged only $29. Though that was not for full synthetic. But the price was closer to $50 at that time for full synthetic. I did not pay that $100+ price though. Walmart will do full synthetic (Mobile 1 or Penzoil) for $55 and that is who did the change. Even Jiffy Lube is charging $100 now for oil changes. The dealers even want you to make appointments now and have 3+ hour wait times even with the appointment or a so-called express lane.

I have only paid for 1 oil change in the past 30 something years and that was the one oil change I have had to do on this car. I live in a Condo complex that does not allow you to work on your cars but I usually do anyways. Though the last couple of years I have had less and less desire to do so and in 2021 when I purchased my 2021 Silverado Trail Boss I decided I was going to just pay for oil changes and tire rotations. I only had that truck long enough for it's first oil change which was covered by the dealer. The next car was a 2022 Nissan Rogue and it turned out to be a lemon and I had Nissan buy it back which ended up happening about the same milage as the first oil change was due so I never did that oil change. The RDX is still under factory warranty so I wanted the dealership to do it for the ease of the records if something happened to the engine. But at $100+ and a 3+ hour wait, I said forget that and went to Walmart instead. I mean $35 for the oil and filter with me doing it and having to dispose of the waste oil and what not vs $55 for someone else to do it, I will pay the $20 difference to not have to do it. I will still do bigger things and mods but this oil change shat, I am done doing.

 

I have 2 cars with drop in oil filters. Basically they are the guts minus the metal housing. The housing is built into the car. With these drop in filters you get a clear view of what the filter media looks like when you change it. I have seen these at 8k to 10K miles and it is not good at all. They start getting clogged up and start to become sucked inwards. These filters seal to the housing at the top and bottom to force the oil to flow through the pleats. When the pleats start to suck in/deform they pull the top and bottom towards one another. This in turn breaks the seal and starts allowing oil to flow around the pleats.

This pic is not mine but shows the deforming of the filter that I am referring to. This is what I was seeing at those extended milage changes



No way will I ever let them go that long again.

 

crap, did not know that. According to the report:

• SUS VIscosity @ 210F: 47.4 (should be 46-56)
• cSt Viscosity @ 100 C: 6.49 (should be 6.0-9.4)

PDF of report attached to this post....

 

I also got around 6.5 cSt @100C. Even though its within acceptable range, your new oil was above 8 cSt. The drop is mostly likely due to fuel, which blackstone under estimates. I am now running 5w-30, will share UOA results.

 

I pulled an oil sample with 6028 miles on the 0w20 oil, and Oil Analyzers said I had 8.7% fuel dilution. I do not believe that. They reported the viscosity as 7.8cSt @100C.
I cannot believe that one could have 8.7% fuel and not go below spec for viscosity. I seem to recall that you had an OA report of 4.x%, and were significantly
lower in viscosity. Also, 8.7% fuel dilution would be quite obvious on the oil dipstick level, which had little change from the time the oil was changed.

I pulled another sample 782 miles later (6810 miles on the oil), and Blackstone showed less that 0.5% fuel dilution. They reported viscosity of 7.74, essentially the
same as Oil Analyzers had reported. With a flash point of 375F, I suspect that Blackstone may be underreporting the fuel dilution, but not by that much.

Both samples were drawn after long drives (200 miles). We don't do much in the way of super short drives, mostly 15-30 miles one way, returning with the engine
still pretty warm. Also, it almost never gets down to freezing here and the RDX is kept in the garage, so we do not have a bad case for fuel dilution.

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Back on topic -- I now do the same 50%, 0% oil change routine as russianDude, so about every 4000 miles. So far, I have changed both oil and filter, but
am considering changing just the oil on the upcoming A service. If I just change the oil, I will use my evacuator and be done in a few minutes without
needing to change clothes or get under the car.

 

Strange that OilAnalyzers reported above 5%. Mine just said fuel > 5%.

I do not change my oil filter mid cycle, only change it once when its at zero 0%.
its extremely easy to swap only oil in my garage, got Kirkland oil from costco when it was on sale $32 for 2 5qt jugs, so its like $16 oil change and takes 10min without filter.

I am sure you could go two MID cycles on one filter, but I would then buy oil filter for longer OCI such as fram ultra.

 

Dealership will typically change both oil and filter when you come for an oil change. But in theory you could skip changing oil filter every other oil change as per manual.

 

$40k-$55k+ vehicle and it's a no brainer IMO to replace the filter with EVERY oil change - a $10-$15 part item. I also change the air and air cabin filters once a year too - those are easy DIY and parts are less then $40 for both of them.

 

Honda oil filter is like $7. Sure, you can change it every time. I think more frequent oil change is more important for these engines

 

I've never heard of changing oil and leaving the filter. You'd be running fresh oil through a dirty filter. When I asked my dealer they said they always change the filter with the oil.

 

it does not matter. Have you ever cut these filters? There is not much dirt in them as people think, they will easily go 15-20k miles. Oil filter that is not clogged filter — will filter just fine even with 10k miles on it. When you change oil, even including filter, you never remove all oil from car, plenty of old oil left that just mixes with the new one.
I change mine every MID cycle, but it’s not necessary. I do however change oil twice as often, half way in MID schedule.

 

I have seen ones get clogged and start sucking itself in before 10k of use. I have seen this more than once. I posted about it earlier. I will never let a filter go that long.

 

For an additional $10 and 10 minutes you have a proper oil change. Why do it half way?

 

Because no decent filter needs changing more often than 8k miles, and I change the oil every 4k because of fuel dilution. Do as you like. p.s., I don't change transmission filters as often as the fluid, either.

 

I do the same, change filter every 7-8k miles, oil every 4k. With my first gen RDX I used to change mobil1 oil filter every 14k miles, and it was fine when I had it cut open, so I am not worried either way, just like changing it every 7k miles.

 

In fact just yesterday changed oil at 50% (3800 miles) without changing oil filter. It has enough clearance that I did not even have to lift the car.

 

Okay, I used my evacuator, then jacked the RDX up and pulled out the drain plug. Unlike my VW, which only gets an additional couple of ounces via the drain plug, the RDX got an additional quart between the drain and the filter.

So, an evacuator is not appropriate for the RDX. Maybe if the hose is more flexible (my fairly stiff hose just abruptly bottomed out in the pan), but I will just drain it the usual way.

 

That's good to know.
I've never used one of those suction devices but as I get older I've been thinking that it might be worth a try. I guess I'll just stick with the drain plug for as long as I can.

 

At 19,701 miles on my 2019 Acura RDX Tech, I did a DIY oil change, OIL FILTER change and tire rotation. Since I had the RDX jacked up on jack stands, it was easy to change the oil filter while changing the oil.

 

Last time when I change just oil (kept old filter), I did not even jack up the car, if you are skinny enough you can remove drain plug by simply crawling under

 

what sequence did you follow to get it up on 4 jack stands? did you raise the front first; lower on stands and then repeat at the rear?

 

That's affirm. Once the RDX is up on all four jack stands, I also keep the floor jack up against the rear jack point for extra safety.