Ike wrote:
> My daughter's new FIT seems to "sense" oil condition, rather than depend
> on miles driven. That's clever, if it's true. Is it?

The oil condition is not sensed directly. The engine computer monitors
total revolutions, temperatures and other factors to arrive at an aging
curve for the oil. It is much more sophisticated then the old xxx
miles/yyy months way of doing things.

GM of all companies has been a leader in this kind of technology, but
many of the Germans and now Honda are also taking up this methodology.

Assuming that Honda's engineers did their homework correctly it should
work out well. If you want a little extra safety factor you could do
the oil change early, say at 20-30% of indicated oil life remaining
instead of going until the car insists that it is time.

The new way is much improved over the old rules-of-thumb.

John