With today's oil and especially synthetics 5w-30 is fine year round, my family owns a 1-ton diesel even it never sees 20w-50!!!

Synthetics actually sell a 5w-50 should you care.

 

If your car doesnt have too many miles on it, such as below 90,000 then you should definatly switch to synthetic ASAP. Its much better on the gaskets and will help to prevent engine wear. If you have over then its best to stick to real oil cuz or else you may have some oil leaks and synthetic will leak much faster.

 

I recently bought a '99 Accord with the 4 banger and the guy who owned it said he believed it was consuming oil so he put in 10W-30. I was concerned about mileage but it's religiously gotten 30+ MPG and in the 2 months I've owned it, it hasn't consumed a drop of oil. I'll probably put 5W-30 back in when I change it next month and see if he was just smokin crack. 20W-50 seems a little excessive though, I don't think I'd go that far.

 

First of all, I would like to thank all of you guys postings. After some reasearch I have found the followings:

i) Once you start using synthetic, you shouldn't use regular light oil anymore.
ii)Since I have ULEV engine, I should use 5w-30 until my car reach to 100k miles.
iii) It is really a good idea to change the oil each 2500 miles siince i am getting strange vibration around 2500 miles after i changed the oil.

I might be wrong in above points. So. please please let me know if you have different opinion on this. I think, i would stick to the regular 5w-30 motor oil and change every 2500 miles.

Thanks again for all of your posting. I am learning about cars little by little.

Bill.

 

You should be able to drive 7500mi on an oil change, especially with synthethic. You need to find the cause of the 2500 mi shake. Run the oil as recommened per your owner's manual. Which is either 5w-30 or 5w-20 in most cases.

There should be no reason to change oil brands/types after the magic 100k mi. You own a honda in theory the car should die around the running engine.