I just bought a new Integra with the 1.5 about a month back, should I be worried about this?
Doesn’t Honda’s maintenance minder system account for these short trips and drop your OCI down?
When I used to do hour long commutes my oil change light didn’t come on til I clocked 9-10k. Now that I’m doing 2 miles a day I’m already down to 40% after 6k miles.
This is a stupid clickbaity article.
Oil dilution can happen to any car that doesn’t fully warm up during its usual use. Driving a mile or two to the grocery store once a week and again to church on Sunday is terrible for the engine - CRV 1.5T or not.
Are certain engines more prone to oil dilution? Yes.
Is this an isolated issue with CR-V’s or Honda 1.5T’s for that matter? No.
This has more to do with the owner’s driving habits than it does the engine itself.
Hybrids are especially susceptible, at least ones with direct injection. My Wrangler, like most PHEVs, has logic to track how much oil is in the fuel (via software estimates) and force engine runtime to burn it off. Does it work well enough to keep the oil good long term? I don’t really know, no one does yet - but I do know that after so many cold starts and short trips, it will force engine use until you get the oil hot enough, long enough for it to decide it’s good again.
Of course being a PHEV, the Wrangler has a great solution built in to handle oil dilution on shorter trips.
Fuck I just bought an N52 to drive to work only 6 miles lmao, my car doesn’t even warm up, and lots of idling
It’s a good engine in terms of fuel efficiency and meeting emissions as it’s intended to do so, but longevity is questionable and it’s not because of the oil dilution. The head gasket issues that the 10th Gen Accord (some CR-Vs and Civics but not as many) equipped with 1.5T is horrible. If you look on forums and YouTube, you’ll see many owners complaining about them failing. The fuel injectors equipped with the engine also seem to be problematic.
Mine is over 95k+ and has been trouble free though so fingers crossed.
And any car
The 2.0 NA in my wife’s Civic may not be quick, but it is gonna last a long time. Had it almost 4 years with no issues at all.
The poor 1.5t has such a bad wrap from this issue when its really a great engine.
I wonder if there’s a fundamental flaw with these engines that seems to exacerbate this issue.
Just about direct injected engine nowadays can be susceptible to oil dilution, but this Honda 1.5T is the one we seem to hear about most commonly being affected by it.
has been a thing since the mid 2010’s why is this being posted now
I’ll bet that auto start/stop makes this worse. Just think about someone in a cold climate who only drives around town with the engine off & heat on at every light. No way the oil gets up to temperature.
The real question is, was there any engine failures due to oil dilution? I searched hard, and I have not found any posts saying their engines are failing hard.
In other words, there is no indication that 1.5T engine is unreliable DESPITE oil dilution issues.
Not necessarily a reliability issue, more an issue with the engine having excessive wear due to reduced oil film strength.
Short trips kill cars.
Cars are meant to be driven 15-20 minutes at minimum. The oil needs to get up to temperature, the exhaust system needs to get up to temperature, you need enough time at temperature to vaporize water and fuel out of the oil and let crankcase pressure move those vapors out of the engine.
I work with classic cars and I tell the owners to never let the cars idle more than a minute or two and never take short trips.