I got a new 2010 CR-V and wife asked me how to break it in properly.
What is the proper way?
I don't care what the manual says. What do you guys feel is the best
mileage to do the first oil change? I normally change my oil and
filter around 3500 miles on my other cars with no synthetic.
You just entrusted Honda with tens of thousands of your dollars in exchange
for a complicated machine that might as well be a "black box" to you.
The engineers that designed the vehicle and its systems have performed
testing that consumed hundreds of millions of dollars and millions of hours
of time. Some of that testing was done in order to determine the
maintenance requirements.
The end result of all that testing is manifested in the Maintenance Minder
on your dashboard, and in the Maintenance Schedule in the Owner's Manual.
If you're willing to trust Honda enough to purchase a piece of their
complex, precision machinery, but regard as suspect Honda's official word
on how to take care of it, preferring the opinions of anonymous, uneducated
Usenet posters instead, you're asking for trouble.
Having said that, I am of the opinion that you can never change your oil
too often. I draw a distinction, however, between replacement of the
factory fill and subsequent oil changes.
It has not been established with 100% certainty that the factory fill is
indeed ordinary off-the-shelf motor oil. It might be slightly different
from off-the-shelf, but nobody really knows. For that reason I would leave
the factory fill in until the Minder says to replace it. After that, change
it /more/ often than required if you like. And always use an OEM filter.
