Trotting out a Honda bulletin saying synthetic oil won't allow rings to seat properly, etc., etc., doesn't necessarily make it true...there are myriad reasons why Honda (or any large manufacturing multinational) might put a spin on a situation that isn't entirely accurate. My own anecdotal experience is that in a new engine, synthetic can significantly increase oil consumption...so it's not inconceivable to me that Honda spews some technical voodoo and a "thou shalt not" edict to deflect customer criticism and/or potential warranty claims from non-attentive owners running their cars out of oil.



I went through this whole debate in reverse last year on a Porsche site, where their engineers swore on their stack of research documents that the rings in any modern engine produced to industry-standard tolerances would seat just fine, bearings would break in properly and oil consumption would drop off after a few thousand miles using synthetic oil (with no special additives) from the day the car was delivered. Mind you, we weren't talking about an engine as sophisticated as the S2K's...just your run-of-the-mill twin-turbo, intercooled flat six pumping out 415hp at .9 bar of boost.



At the time, my spider senses were on full alert because, after all, Porsche has a marketing deal with Mobil, and that's pretty much what you'd expect them to say. But then they went one step further, trotting out internal engineering documents (every company's got 'em) advising that for a variety of reasons, anything but Mobil OW-40 would not provide proper lubrication, and that oil should remain in the crankcase for the first 3000 miles...trouble was, even though that was the factory fill, that weight of oil was not available at any Porsche dealer in North America. What was an owner to do who was burning a litre of oil every 400 miles?



Hey, I had a Honda engineer tell me at a race at Westwood, B.C. that I should break in the engine in my Honda-Michelin car (a Canadian late 80s-early 90s spec racing series) by running it slowly and carefully to redline in every gear every chance I got. When I asked him about how that would affect the lifespan of the engine, his reply was "It'll have virtually no impact over the realistic service life of the vehicle...at worst the engine will last 120,000 miles instead of 150,000." Should I have belied the engineer, or the factory manual which specified an entirely different break-in procedure?



Bottom line...when it comes to oil, break-in procedures and a zillion other automotive issues, we all tend to base our opinions partly on science and partly on what our own personal experiences lead us to want to believe.



I think Honda's simply giving us the "authorized" truth on the synthetic oil issue...just as they are on the 1-2 grind and noisy clutches. What they know to be true and what they tell owners, and even dealers, are two different things...