Maintenance Suggestion for a 2016 Civic EXL with 107,000 Miles

minimalistix

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Hello Everyone,

I hope everyone is doing great, I recently purchased a 2016 Honda Civic EXL 1.5L Turbo with 107,000 miles on the odometer. According to the CARFAX it was always mantained at honda, except for a couple of time that the owner took it to Valvoline Instant Oil Change a couple of times. Also the previous owner went around 100,000 miles to Honda of Wesport (hondaofwestport.com) and they reprogramed the TCS / ABS Module, repaired the Anti-Theft System and replaced the battery of the keyfob.

The car is blue and its from Connecticut, just in case the owner is reading.

What is your recommendation for a maintenance for this vehicle as soon as arrives at my hands?

PS: The car was bought at Manheim.
PS2: Avatar is not the car, just a random picture from the internet.

Thanks for the help in advance,

Wilson,
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charleswrivers

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Well... if it's already bought...

Take the vehicle to the shop of your choice and have a comprehensive vehicle inspection and a review of it's maintenance records to ensure its up to date. If there's any doubt if something been serviced, have it performed. I would only do this with any required maintainence items (cabin and engine air filter, transmission fluid, brake fluid, coolant, etc.) and not a bunch of add-on optional stuff (fuel injector cleaning service, etc). If you're a little handy, you can do all of those yourself. It isn't bad to have a second look on items like your belt, brakes, a good look at the undercarriage and so on. In a perfect world, that inspection and review would be performed before purchase. It's a pile of miles... but a fairly new car still.

Once that's done... drive it.
 
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minimalistix

minimalistix

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Thanks Charles;

Sadly, it had to be like that as the car was bought at Manheim; they do a PSI (Post Sale Inspection) but i don't think is very thorough. Here in the DR the Civics are way more expensive if bought locally. Also almost all of the available on the market are repaired salvaged vehicles; mostly badly repaired.

As soon as it gets here, i'll buy all the fluids from the local Honda dealership.

i'll keep you posted.
 

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Thanks Charles;

Sadly, it had to be like that as the car was bought at Manheim; they do a PSI (Post Sale Inspection) but i don't think is very thorough. Here in the DR the Civics are way more expensive if bought locally. Also almost all of the available on the market are repaired salvaged vehicles; mostly badly repaired.

As soon as it gets here, i'll buy all the fluids from the local Honda dealership.

i'll keep you posted.
I'd bet those are mostly highway miles... so the engine has some hours on it, but I really wouldn't be overly concerned. While we don't have a lot of history on the current variant of the L-engine... the L-engine has been used in other cars since the turn of the century. Since yours will be one of the higher mileage ones, if you also plan on doing a lot of highway miles, it'll be a good showing to see how they do from 100,000 to 200,000 miles. 100,000 miles on any modern engine, properly maintained, regardless of manufacturer is pretty much just broke in and a long way from being worn out. I'd expect someone drove a pile of depreciation on it, you got it for a good price and you'll otherwise have a ~4 year old car to enjoy and not worry too much about further depreciation so much... because it's already happened.
If you got a decent price, I think it could be a great deal. The maintenance minder will pop up what's needed from now on. Off the top of my head, the spark plugs probably need to be done around 100,000 miles as they're iridium's and they're usually changed out at that time. If you go to Hondas website, they may have a maintenance schedule you can look at like they tended to put in the glove box of cars that will actually show you a listing based on age/mileage you can review. The only real worry is that someone had maintenance pop up on the maintenance minder and reset it without doing it... so if you don't have a record of it being done, assume it hasn't been done and go ahead and do it asap.
 


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Copy that,

Acording to the carfax, the car has some gaps between maintenances. i attached the carfax report for your analisys.

I really appreciate the help Charles,

Wilson,
Brother... high school Spanish was a long time ago. :spaz:Give me a sec and see if I can find a listing on Honda's site. As I see this, you have just a couple oil changes tracked... the most recent one looks like the engine and cabin filters got done. The one item of greatest concern would be the CVT, assuming it's an automatic. ABS some work done. Looks like battery got replaced. I'm not sure what, "Retrovisor exterior reemplazado / reparado" is discussing. Some sort of repair.... the stuff between is the car being titled/offered for sale.

Someone would hate buying my cars... I do my own maintenance... but I do it. It's not a terrible thing, you may just have no way to verify past maintenance.
 
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minimalistix

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Wow, I'm really sorry for the language of the document, completely forgot about the languange.

Gimme a couple minutes.

Wilson,
 

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Unfortunately... the thing I pulled up doesn't really give an old-style schedule. It just gives a list of what all the codes mean.

https://owners.honda.com/servicemaintenance/minder?year=2016&model=Civic-Sedan

I think, based on what I see... at 104k, you got your cabin and engine air filters done. You should be current on your oil/oil filter. The last time I see it done looks like (if my Spanish is right) at 97,707. You should have had an oil but no filter changed since then (you only required to change the oil filter every other change). Unless your Spanish is better than mine such that you see it in there... I'd recommend:

A good inspection done at a shop to check overall condition of the car... (brakes, suspension components, axles, battery/charging system condition, belt [this guy breaks and your car will be dead as soon as the battery is flat because the alternator won't charge] etc.)
CVT/MT fluid asap.
Brake bleed and new fluid soon. The MM is around every 3 years.
Coolant soon. On my Odyssey I'm at 5 years and 70k miles and the MM hasn't triggered yet. I expect it soon. I figured we were either 60k or 100k and ~5 years.
Spark plugs soon. Copper to platinum to iridiums usually are 30k-60k-100k respectively. They'd be due. The car may be running fine and may continue to do so... but as the plugs wear, the gap will change slightly and it won't be as good as it could be... and iridiums are very difficult to adjust w/o damaging them. They're pretty easy to get to on our cars if you want to DIY.

There is a valve lash adjustment that is called out... but this is really called out, 'as noisy'. Most cars are self-adjusting and have been for a vey long time. I've only had to ever do it on one more modern (within 10 years old) car and small engines.

If you want to pay someone else to do it, expect several hundred dollars. If you were doing this all yourself, you could probably buy all the fluids and plugs for under $100.

As to that CVT, the maintenance should involve you doing a single drain and refill. I'd buy the new fluid and look at it. I don't have a CVT, but if it's anything like regular ATF, new ATF is kind of a bright, clear dark red/cherry color. when you dab it on a paper towel, it turns it a pretty pink. If the old fluid comes out quite dark and cloudy... I'd do a single drain and fill, then the next time an oil change is due... do it again. That's the only thing that may not have been done that I'd want to do a couple extra iterations of change-out to replace what may be a lot of old fluid. When I took another Honda in for a TSB to be done... when they did the fluid changeout, they did 3 drain and fills to get the majority of the oil fluid out. Honda did not flush it and I wouldn't flush a transmission that is only supposed to have drains/fills on it.

The only CVT I had was on a small engine and used a thicker gear oil so the color may not apply. Still... color/clarity/smell kind of come into play. You only get a portion of the fluid out when you do a drain fill. There is a lot of internet doom and gloom about doing flushes on a transmission... especially one who may not have had fluid changes done on then all of the sudden gets a flush done. Failed sensors... leaking seals and so on. I, myself, would only do drain/fills and not ever do a flush. If you want to get more fluid out... dilution is the solution... do more frequent drain/fills to change out your fluid.
 
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minimalistix

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Basically the important events are the following:

at 44,244 miles, Oil Change @ Pit Shop Express. (23/05/2017)
at 97,707 miles, Oil Change @ Valvoline Instant Oil (27/05/2018)

after that at Honda of Wesport; (19/09/2018)
  • Maintenance Inspection Completed.
  • External side view mirror replaced or repaired.
  • Anti-theft / Keyless entry battery replacement
  • Reprogrammed the ABS / TCS Module
at 104,631 miles, Oil Change @ Valvoline Instant Oil. Also they did change a light bulb (Doesnt specify which one), Cabin Filter, and A/C Filter. (28/11/2018)

What worries me its the intervals for the these events, i hope the previous owner has done some manitenace by himself during those periods.

Wilson,
 

charleswrivers

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Basically the important events are the following:

at 44,244 miles, Oil Change @ Pit Shop Express. (23/05/2017)
at 97,707 miles, Oil Change @ Valvoline Instant Oil (27/05/2018)

after that at Honda of Wesport; (19/09/2018)
  • Maintenance Inspection Completed.
  • External side view mirror replaced or repaired.
  • Anti-theft / Keyless entry battery replacement
  • Reprogrammed the ABS / TCS Module
at 104,631 miles, Oil Change @ Valvoline Instant Oil. Also they did change a light bulb (Doesnt specify which one), Cabin Filter, and A/C Filter. (28/11/2018)

What worries me its the intervals for the these events, i hope the previous owner has done some manitenace by himself during those periods.

Wilson,
I hope so too. You just don't know. All you can really do is get a good inspection, get everything current that you're not 100% sure about so at least you know that is was done now... drive a car that I hope you got a pretty decent deal on and hope that it was a good buy. I wouldn't be concerned with the brake fluid or coolant if it hadn't been changed hurting anything. You don't know about ~10 oil changes that should have happened between 0-100k miles... but you have to assume they were done, documented or not. You could ask a shop to pull plugs and do a compression check to see if there's excessive cylinder/ring wear... but honestly, I wouldn't. If it runs fine, it's probably fine. You won't know anything about bearings w/o a tear down and if the engine isn't knocking when running... they're probably fine. Unless the engine fails (and that's *very* unlikely) it'd not like you tear it down to have it rebuilt if one cylinder had a little lower compression than the others.

Just get everything caught up and drive it. I'd check your oil level every 1000 miles or so to make sure it's not burning oil and the level going down quickly. Check under wherever the car is parked and make sure nothing is dripping other than condensation from the air conditioner. No stains... oil level holds pretty steady between oil changes... car should be fine. If the level goes up over the course of time between oil changes... there's some noise about fuel dilution from some gas making it past the rings, especially for short trips on a cold engine. You can read up on it on here. Regardless of mileage, it should still be covered under a TSB that a Honda dealership may address for nothing out-of-pocket.
 


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minimalistix

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Thanks for the help Charles, car should be here in 1 ~ 2 weeks.i'll check / replace everything you mentioned, i already have a list to address. Car was purchased for 11k, on a 3.9 condition (5 being the highest) (Only has very light paint scratches, and tires are at more than 50%).

According to your recomendations my TODO is the following:

-> Change / Replacement
Oil
Oil Filter
CVT Fluid
Brake Fluid
Coolant
Spark Plugs
Tires

-> Check / Inspect
Belts
Brakes
Supsension Components
Axels
Battery
Alternator
A/C

-> Post Service
Check Oil levels weekly
Check Oil look weekly
Check CVT fluid
Check CVT fluid look
 

charleswrivers

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Thanks for the help Charles, car should be here in 1 ~ 2 weeks.i'll check / replace everything you mentioned, i already have a list to address. Car was purchased for 11k, on a 3.9 condition (5 being the highest) (Only has very light paint scratches, and tires are at more than 50%).

According to your recomendations my TODO is the following:

-> Change / Replacement
Oil
Oil Filter
CVT Fluid
Brake Fluid
Coolant
Spark Plugs
Tires

-> Check / Inspect
Belts
Brakes
Supsension Components
Axels
Battery
Alternator
A/C

-> Post Service
Check Oil levels weekly
Check Oil look weekly
Check CVT fluid
Check CVT fluid look
As to the inspection, most shops have a 'vehicle inspection' that should be pretty comprehensive. This is stateside, but I vehicle maintenance is pretty much the same no matter were we live or what language wee speak.

If you have a shop around you've used before that you like, I'd just go to them, tell them that you bought a higher mileage used car and you want them to go over it with you. For liability reasons... they may not invite you out to look at some things with them. Independent shops will sometimes still let you come out and check things they see for yourself. Just tell them you'd like them to look at stuff that needs attention/fixing. If it's a place you know/trust... they shouldn't upsell you too much. Your fluids list looks fine. If I was doing it... my above and beyond check is to dap fresh CVT fluid on a paper towel... dab the current fluid from the end of the dip stick that's in the CVT on a paper towel and compare. Have a drain and fill done. After the car is run and the old and new fluid mixes... pull the dipstick and dab again. If it still looks kinda dirty/cloudy... I'd have another drain/fill done. This is just based on an assumption it may never have been done before. From another thread... it looks like the MM should have said it was required every ~30k miles... so you may be well overdue. I wouldn't be overly concerned... 1) you have the car and it's your now 2) you got it roughly 1/2 off compared to new MSRP 3) it may have been changed... you just don't have proof 4) even if it wasn't... it's likely spent most of it's life being driven on the highway, given those miles... and those tend to be easy miles.

My above-and-beyond is really looking at maybe doing an additional drain and fill based on how the fluid looks on the CVT. It's relatively cheap insurance if you have any questions. Otherwise... if the car isn't leaking fluids... burning oil... and you got a good inspection and everything changed that you don't have proof was done to make you current... I'd say you're in good shape.

Here's a thread to check out... it shows that the location of the dipstick you could pull and dab the CVT fluid to check it out.

https://www.civicx.com/threads/how-to-change-transmission-oil-on-1-5t-cvt.31029/#post-524224
 

charleswrivers

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Also... and again, this is ATF for a conventional transmission. The CVT fluid may be a little different. This is what I was talking about when you look at ATF. If you smell new fluid... it has a certain smell. Older fluid doesn't smell way different. Very old/burned fluid has a very different smell. It's hard to describe... you just have to check it for yourself, if you so desire.

Honda Civic 10th gen Maintenance Suggestion for a 2016 Civic EXL with 107,000 Miles atf


I have towed ~4000 miles in one trip over the course of a single week across the states before and turned fluid 1/2 way between the 'good' and 'needs replacing' into 'burnt'. Now... this is on a totally different vehicle so don't be overly concerned... it's just what I've observed. I think the CVT guys still use a similar fluid... smell and color-wise, though it's own stuff and not Honda's ATF. Maybe one of our CVT owning-friends will chime in. @gtman you're my CVT-hero. Anything to add?
 
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minimalistix

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Thanks Charles for the help.

I'll try to document the case as much as possible hoping that this will help another person.

i;ll keep you posted,

Wilson,
 

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I would check the oil dipstick for any discoloration, it could indicate the oil wasn't changed as often as it should have. The CVT fluid is easy to change, I believe the color of it new was a light brown. I only used Honda's CVT fluid to replace it. I did mine at 48k miles not because the MM came up, just felt better doing it at that time. The fluid is about $12 dollars a quart.
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