Originally Posted by Firehawk409
Wife drove it for the majority of ownership. 20miles round trip for work....few longer trips here and there to visit family. She drives very slow and not aggressive at all. Ihave been driving it the past 6months. Lots of city driving... Uber eat delivery. Running errands and what not. I drive it a bit more aggressively.
Amsoil recommendeds no more then 15k interval for the civic. I change the oil and filter once a year and thats about 10 to 12k. The pcv I just changed at few months ago. I have to admit that I forgot all about it.
Valves are now adjusted and cleaned out egr.
Try taking it to the highway when you have a chance, get the oil up to temperature and give that engine some revs.
Originally Posted by Mad_Hatter
Originally Posted by gathermewool
No one should care about the varnish.
It means NOTHING. Stop listening to any poster who tells you to do this or that to fix the varnish.
I've never heard that and this 👇 article by a gentleman who has extensive experience with lubricants and serves as a U.S. delegate to the ISO tribology and oil analysis working groups, seems to disagree with your assertion that varnish is "nothing" to worry about.
https://www.machinerylubrication.com/Read/268/oil-sludge-varnish
My understanding is that varnish and sludge are the product of oil degradation, so in just my lay observation seems the OP's running that Amsoil too long. I don't use high end oils at all and when I did my valve covers i didn't have nearly that much varnish. I had some but not that much. But hey, every car and every driver and their habits are different so maybe that's considered a somewhat "normal" amount of varnish for a Honda engine with that many miles. Dunno... just seems odd to me to see that amount of varnish given how expensive and supposedly how high quality Amsoil is but that's purely a subjective observation on my part and I could be way off.
This