A little problem... The A1 service light came on last night, surprisingly at 3740 miles. I called a few Acura dealers this morning, but no one has any appointment available until Tuesday morning, and I am planning to be out of town over the weekend. I am sure my mechanic will do an equally good job of an oil change, and tire rotation. I just wanted to make sure that I get the right oil put in. Any suggestions on which oil and filter to get? I am limited to whatever would be available from gas stations and/or some store like pep or 'big boys toys' since I need to take care of this today before I travel tomorrow.

BTW, when all done, to reset the service light, just hold and press the option button for 10 secs for the message and message indicator to disappear?

On a side note, entering 'oil' in a search yields no results, and oil change brings up a host of threads with hardly anything to do with oil change.

 

What did the message say? "Service Due Soon", "Service Due Now", or "Service Past Due"? If it's the first one, it comes up when the oil life is at 20% (or 15%)...which you mean you still have some time before it really does need to be changed, and you could therefore wait until after your trip this weekend to take care of it.

On the search function of this site, you can't search for words 3 characters or less (It's a MySQL thing.

As for oil type, the oil cap just says 5w-20. I use 5w-30 as many others do. You can use synthetic, synthetic blend, or 'normal' oil, it doesn't matter. To find the info you are alooking for, check the 3G Garage. The link is at the top of the lists of threads.

 

Thanks for the info. It is a Service Due Soon message with oil at < 15%. My trip will be 600 miles RT so i would rather get it changed before I leave.

 

Many (and I mean MANY) people use an affordable dino oil called Havoline 5W-20 and a purolator filter available from Autozone. It costs me about $15 for both. If you do a search for oil, you will literally find hundreds of threads on this very topic. Also, I seriously doubt that there would be any harm in waiting till after the 600 mile trip even if your oil message is less than 15% remaing.

 

Not that I would do an oil change and skip the filter; however, the A1 service is oil change and tire rotation (no filter change required).

You can get Motorcraft syn-blend for about the same price as Havoline (both excellent) and I use the regular Purolator filter (about $2 on sale at Pep Boys).

 

You will be at 0% around 4400 miles. If your current mileage is 3740, after your trip it will be 4340, which is certainly close to my estimate. If you wait until after your trip you will still be fine. But as I said check the 3G Garage for oil info. One you bring it up, just do a CTRL + F and search for the word oil on the page.