Originally Posted By: mpvue
why do people always second guess the people who DESIGNED THE CAR?
Because I don't think their goals and objectives as car builders are the same as my goals and objectives as a car owner.
They want your car to last long enough that you will consider buying another.
I want my car to last FOREVER!
They want to convey the message that their cars have very low routine maintenance costs.
I care very little about routine maintenence costs, especially since I do it myself. What I want is very low REPAIR costs, and ZERO major component failures. During the early 90's GM perfected the 100,000 mile spark plug, and the 40,000 mile alternator. Then they moved on to Oil Life Monitor when they should have been contentrating on intake gaskets. Very misplaced priorities in my opinion.
If they tell you to dump your fluids early, they are admitting that junk gets in there durinng assembly and they are not as clean as they would like you to think, and that break in wear does occur.
I have built engines for 25 years and I KNOW BETTER.
A respected local mechanic that spent a long time as a dealer service manager developed his own suggested fluid change intervals, including an early dump of engine oil, trans fluid, diff oil and PS fluid. He tracked new car customers that used his intervals and those that used the reccomended factory intervals, and his data showed that major components like transmissions, PS pumps, and ABS controllers were lasting in some cases four times longer than those using the factory intervals. I had a nice talk with him one day and he showed me his data.
I don't think that Honda will blow up either way, but I know what I would do. The company I work for even does early drains on engines and transmissions on heavy duty trucks where we are dumping 40 quarts of oil instaed of 4.