I feel so ...used

(Or: Wow, I'm Dumb.)

My new 2012 Civic takes 21st century motor oil.
OK, it IS the 21st century, I can adjust my thinking to this.

Nowhere in the owner's manual does it talk about a change interval.
But the car gives you a dashboard meter that tells you "Percentage of oil life left".

OK, "Everything's up to date in Kansas City" -
maybe there's some modern trick at work here.
Maybe they measure the viscosity, and the car calculates the oil life remaining.
Maybe they optically sense the opacity of the oil and calculate how dirty it is.
Maybe there's some modern µ-proc trick I'm not even thinking of.
Who knows where they get this "percentage life" number from?
We're living in the 21st century.

OK, I decide to TRUST the dashboard meter. Extrapolating,
it's telling me that the break-in oil is good for 10,000 miles.
Wow. It's great, living in the future.

So, the car rolls over 7000 miles, and soon after,
the dashboard meter decrements and says I've got 20%-of-oil-life left.

But I absolutely can't stand it, and go get an oil change.
Afterward, the kid tells me that he reset the meter for me:
which implies that it's simply odometer-driven.
The "Oil Life" meter may not actually be "measuring" ANYTHING.
Maybe it's just a reminder of your mileage since the last oil change.

*So maybe there's NO high-tech real-time measurement of the state of the oil, no, nothing at all.* [Whoops - see UPDATE, below]

Wow, am I an idiot. [This remains a distinct possibility, however.]

On the other hand: the car specifies snythetic 0w-20 oil:
which IS better than dead-dinosaur oil,
and which does have nominally twice the lifespan.
(And: which costs fully twice as much.)

So:
Even if they tell you there's no break-in required, and even if it's
not actually overdue for an oil change - the interval still FEELS over-long.

UPDATE: Hey, I was right the first time. Looking into the question, it seems that the car's CPU really DOES monitor some combination of oil temp, engine revs, time, mileage, etc. - - and really DOES calculate "oil life remaining". What it can't do is know that you've changed the oil - thus the need for the manual reset.

2012 Civics

I had half a thought to swing into a dealership to try to pick the brains of a Honda service shop, but got distracted by a new shipment of Civics at Mohawk.

They had a dozen or more, including:

- LX (AT) at $19,425; to which they had added undercoating or something, to make it $19,804
- EX-L (AT) at $22,725 - with a dealer add-on bringing it to $23,104
- EX-L NAV at $24,225 (!)
and a version that I might actually consider, the
- Civic Hybrid at $26,020 (rated at 44/44/44mpg)

Still no sign of the chimeral HF edition.

So
Hybrid:DX is $26020:$16575
:: 56.98% more than the base model.
That's fully $9445 more - - plus 8% tax = a $10,200.60 price difference.

That's hard to justify just on the basis of gas savings. Even at tomorrow's $10/gallon, that's a thousand gallons of gas; at today's prices, that's not far from a decade of driving.

(I was actually going to ask them about replacement Smart Keys, and about synthetic oil changes, but didn't ever make it inside....)

The Decline of The Red Menace

The Miata now seems to be entering the territory of Oliver Wendell Holmes' "One-Horse Shay". No trouble to speak of for essentially forever, except that the day finally comes when entire vehicle just . . . disintegrates.

Year one: No problems
Year two: Convertible top fails, replaced under warranty
Year three: No problems
Year four: Valve cover gasket leaks. A $50 problem.
Year five: No problems
Year six: No problems
Year seven: Top fails again
Year eight: No problems
Year nine: No problems
Year ten: Center brakelight wire fails
(A zero $ problem: I just spliced in a few inches of used lampcord)
Year eleven: No problems
Year twelve: No problems
Year thirteen: No problems
Year fourteen: No problems
Year fifteen: No problems
Year sixteen: No problems
Year seventeen: No problems
Year eighteen: Cooling system fails (April '07.)
(First the radiator goes, then - when the pressure is increased - all the little fussy hoses at the top of the block fail, one after the other.)
Year nineteen: Transmission explodes (July '08. The Miata finally strands me. Then the alternator dies (Halloween '08))

Now that the transmission replacement is fully amortized (three-and- a-half months), the "Battery!" idiot light came on. I was able to drive to work and back on Friday apparently on just the battery. (Being careful to use no lights, no radio.)

So replacement was this weekend's project: an hour to get the old alternator out, forty-five minutes to go get it tested and trade it for a new one, then a half-hour to put the new one in. (The alternator apparently did not like being sprayed with coolant last season when all the little hoses let go in last year's cooling-system failure. The alternator did continue to work for another ~10,000 miles or so before failing, though.

Here's the trick: to physically get the alternator out of a Miata engine bay, the air intake pipe across the front of the block needs to be disconnected and moved out of the way.

And here's the moral of today's story:

Had I disposed of the Miata after SEVENTEEN YEARS of service (and 140,000 miles), it would have been essentially trouble-free. Now the elderly-car problems are starting, and I should start to think about replacing it. (It's long overdue for an exhaust system, for instance - that'll be next....)

Fun fact: the stock alternator was a Mitsubishi part, the new ($130) rebuild is a Bosch.
My 14mm box wrench was nowhere to be found, so a 9/16" served until I could buy a new one.