You're My Boy, Blue

[ScottyB]

oil drained out! new oil poured in! EXCITEMENT! MADNESS! oil nerd warning below.

so yeah, not much to report other than just driving it an enjoying it over the past months. i ran the onboard "maintenance minder" down to an oil life of 0% and then another 500 miles beyond, and at that point decided to change out my run of Mobil1 0W-40 for a fresh fill of Pennzoil Euro 0W-40 that was on a great sale at wally world. figured it was a great time to do an oil analysis on the engine and find out how healthy it is with it sitting at about 94k miles. the maintenance minder is very conservative and geared for use of standard, not synthetic, oil so i felt that running it all the way down was fine, and a good place to start a baseline. my goal here is to find a sweet spot for how far out i can run a synthetic oil change while also keeping the engine in great shape for being able to wail on it without a second thought.

sent the oil in to Blackstone and the results came back great.

minimal trace elements in the oil (particularly lead/copper/chromium which is your bearings and rings), low silicon so the OEM air filter is working well, low insolubles so the Honda A01 oil filter is doing its job. the cSt viscosity shows that the 0W-40 dipped into 30 weight range by 6600 miles which is right where i wanted it. i take care to drive the car gently until its fully warm, but otherwise it sees normal shifts in the 4-5k RPM range and sees the 8,200 RPM redline multiple times a trip, as it should. being a daily driver, so it sees all the rigors of traffic, long interstate trips, extended idling with the A/C cranked up, and lots of engine shutdowns/cranks when running errands. given this performance i'm sticking with 0W-40 and Honda filters, and will run the next oil change out to 9-10k miles.

also, in case anyone asks, the K20 is spec'd in the US for 5W-30, but given my driving habits, hot as balls climate down here in GA, and feedback from other guys that run these cars hard, made me feel i wanted something a notch above a 30 weight. Mobil's OW-40 is a great oil and notorious for basically being a really beefy 30 weight by the time you put a few miles on it, and then holding that viscosity. with the added thickness, cheap price and shear-stability of this oil i thought it would be the right call.

to further back this up, Honda's higher performance Japanese-market Type-R variant of this chassis, the "FD2", calls for a 5W-40 weight in the factory service manual. Given that the engine in that car is essentially identical internally to mine, aside from a slightly hotter cam and the deletion of balance shafts in the oil pan, supported my thought that the engine would be happy with a 40 weight oil.



up next: it'll be time to crack the valve cover off and install new OEM Denso Iridium spark plugs along with a valve adjustment for its 100k service. i'm interested to see how the top end looks. i've also gotta find some time to replace that ugly, rusty rear caliper with the new factory-coated Nissin unit i got in.