I drove to work and my oil life was 50% and when I came out and started the car after 9 hours sitting, it was 40% ??? This happened last week with my mileage at around 3300 miles. My car has never recieved an oil change yet. From 100% when I bought the car, oil life has gradually gone down in 5% decrements at a reasonable rate. Has anyone else seen sudden drops? Is this typical behavior for it to go faster when it gets below a certain point.

I am full aware that the oil change life is figured through sophisticated metrics based upon engine revolutions, driving conditions, and other factors and that the computer autoMaGiCally determines the oil life based upon these inputs, but a sudden drop like this doesn't seem logical.

There is one item of note---I am in a cold weather climate and we were experiencing extremely cold weather for this time of the year where it was in 20s and wind chill in the single digits for a couple days including the day this occurred. The weather has been warmer lately in the 40s and 50s and I haven't seen any unusual behavior...

 

doesnt it drop by 10% everytime? it starts to drop by 5% decrements when it its 30% --> 25% or something like that.. i dont remember too well someone step in and confirm?

 

I've never seen mine drop by anything other than 10% decrements; It's always 100%, 90%, 80%, 70%, 60%, 50%, etc. (2006 model)

Dan

 

same here. I have to confirm it will decrease by 5% around 30% of oil life. Before that it's 10%

 

^^^^^^^^^^^^I concur

 

I notice it drops a lot faster after 50% however acccording to Acura the oil life is ONLY determined with the mileage as is all the maint. minders. Drive conditions and what-not are not factors - this is what Acura has told me a few times. Everything with the maint. minder goes by MILEAGE ONLY. Who knows...

 

I think I read that in the manual.

 

Exact same thing happened to me. It seemed like it went from 60 to 40 in a hurry. For me it went from 100 straight to 80 straight to 60. Then it went from 60 to 50 to 40 pretty fast. Then 30, 20, 15, 10.

 

I believe the "Mileage only" idea would be entirely false - definitely for the % of oil life remaining computations. Several parameters are analysed by the computer to compute oil life. This is completely evident by how one person/TL hits say "30% oil life remaining" at 4000 miles and another person/TL at 8000 miles.
I can't say completely on how it computes A1 etc. service reminders. My 04TL has near 25K and I have never seen a "service reminder", only % of oil life... Maybe that's due to me resetting it at every oil change, who knows.
The oil life monitor I like, yet would never use the "service due" as a guide for required service anyway - money poorly spent in most cases...


As for the initial question, the colder weather may just have been the reason... The computer was recalculating given the change in outside variables etc..

 

I think I'm mistaken - I think it's the service reminders that are based on mileage? I'll go check a bit later and give you guys an update. I just remember that there was something in the manual that said something about something that is based on mileage.

 

Hmmm, I reserve the right to have been hallucinating for 3300 miles , but I could have sworn my oil life % had been dropping by 5% until this one time. I will need to see how it continues to behave and when it is reset...

Regarding the manual---On the back of my "2006 TL Owner's Manual" it has the following in the lower-right hand corner "23000.2006.04.6" which I assume contains the version/revision info embedded in it. Here is what it says on page 209 in the Maintenance Minder section:

 

I've been able to hit 9000 miles before I was at "Service Due Now" because I was doing mainly freeway driving. Previous to my freeway driving, I was getting on average about 6500-7000 miles prior to "Service Due Now"

 

They told you wrong. The MID factors oil life using several variables, mileage being just one of them. I have two 3G TL's (mine is an '04 manual and my wife's is an '05 automatic). My wife works part time and her work commute is all on country roads as is most of her other driving. My work commute takes me into traffic in a small city (Manassas), and through suburban areas with the requisite lights and stop signs.

Her MID drops much more slowly than does mine. In fact, I have change my oil change intervals from 5000 miles to 4000 miles just for this reason (her's are still at 5000 and at that, her MID will still indicate 30%).