I am at 3850. I really want to change it now, but I am going to wait until 5k

 

Honda engineers didn't put the oil minder for kicks. It's there so you can follow it. If they felt that a change every 3k miles is essential for the longevity of engine life, they would have put that into consideration. The fact is that unless you are tracking everyday, oil change every 3k miles is an overkill. This has been proven via repeated oil analysis from many different sources. It's good that you're changing oil at 3k intervals for your own peace of mind, but don't say that it's better for the car, because it is not.

For the ones with 06+, you should change the oil at 10-15% oil life remaining. I currently have 9000 miles on my 07. The first time i needed a change, i obviously had gone thru break-in and drove the car carefully and well mannered. The indicator turned to 15% at around 5000 miles. The second time around, i beat the crap out of the car. The oil indicator turned to 15% at around 4000 miles. GO BY THE INDICATOR. IT WORKS and is the best way of measuring when is the ideal time to do the change because the car itself is monitoring when it needs new oil. Just my $0.02.

 

TBONE--thanks for the info. What if at 4K, oil minder is stil at 40%?

 

Couple more questions

1) When is the right time to switch over to synthetic in the S2000?

2) At what miles should the tranny and diff fluid be changed?

07 s2000

 

Do you have the owners manual? It is covered in there.

As far as the syn oil. I switched after I flushed the break in oil. But what do I know?

 

I assume you have lots of highway miles. The service tech told me that the maintenance minder takes that into consideration. He said he's seen the maintenance minder 15% light come on as high as ~6500 miles. I did my first oil change at 5% oil life at 4100 miles and I have mostly city miles. I was going to milk it to 0% just to get the most out of my special first oil, but it turned 5% on my day off.

 

stinky---yes ALL highway miles

 

People say you should wait until about 10K miles before switching to synth oil. I'm not sure how valid this is as a lot of cars come from the factory with synth oil. My Evo did and so did my GTO.

 

Just wanted to throw in that the oil minder is based off driving habbits not actual oil quality.

 

Jeez, didn't any of you guys get a frikkin' owners' manual with you cars?