I've had my 2011 auto fit sport for one year this week (1st week of April). Since I've retired, I've only got 3k miles on it. I just checked the oil yesterday and it's clean and gold in color. The MM shows 80% oil life.

What do you folks think I should do? Change or not?

Than you in advance for advice/input.

 

If the oil is in your car for more than one year, change it along with the filter no matters what the MM said.

 

To keep the warranty valid, you need to change it at least once a year regardless of mileage.

Once the power train warranty is up, in theory you might could go longer, but it's not like once a year oil changes are a big cost.

 

For newer cars. Oil changes should be done 8000-10000 miles. So once a year is fine. But all cars are different. I had to do an oil change at 7000 miles.

 

Change it.

 

I also vote to change it. If nothing else, for the warranty.

 

Owner's manual says. At 15% or 1 year, whichever comes first.

1 year it is. time to schedule the apt.

~SB

 

When in doubt, change it out.

On the flip side, I drove 10,800 miles before the MM icon came on for the first time. But I drove that in just over 3 months.

 

you also know, that many of the cars sit on a boat or on the dealer lot for an undefined amount of time, sometimes months;

So even when you thought it's been exactly a year since delivery, really it could be 13months or 16months since the oil was first run in the engine, depending if your specific car was a late seller or not.

My point is it's not Cinderella at the ball, there's already months of fudge factor that even the most meticulous Fit owner record keeper didn't take into account and their car still works fine.

So my advice is, if you're a low mileage driver, you're proably going to continue being a low-mileage driver; so just do some maintenance eventually, and the timestamp of when our planet has lapped the sun is as good of a marker as anything else. Align your yearly maintenance with a month or season you can remember and when it's convenient for the weather in your locale or other reasons. If it happens to be your delivery date so be it. For mine I choose July.

 

Amen. the color of the oil has very little to do with its condition as a lubricant.Black oil indicates lots of oxidized impurities but golden collor merely says that there is little oxidized impurites but doesn't indicate the absence of impurites that 'attack' the internal metals and seals/gaskets.