Oil Life Percentage

[watt-man]

Thought #1:
In Post 24 from DWG, it states:

• ... if your vehicle is driven more than 10,000 miles/16,000 kilometers within a shorter timeframe, the estimates will not reflect one year, but will reflect 10,000 miles/16,000 kilometers.

This seems to directly say that if you're driving under 10K/year that it will simply go to 0% in 365 days. If you're over that, it will go to 0% at 10,000 miles.

Our Bronco is certainly under a 10K/year driving rate so far. If I plot our nightly oil life percentage vs. nightly odometer reading, the chart wanders a bit but if I plot nightly oil life percentage DAYS, it's a perfectly straight line. This sounds FAR from intelligent and is simply counting how many days we've owned the vehicle, whether it's driven or not.

Thought #2:
Those same links provided by DWG have a statement that you have to have more than 150 trips to establish your driving habits, maybe THEN it will start using the data to actually make an intelligent choice? Our car has not been driving 150 times yet. So maybe this will start being more than a linear day-counter in 2026.

Just interesting stuff. In our Hondas with the K24 engine, my wife (lots of town driving) seemed to request a change about every 6000-6500 miles in her car. In my car (almost only road trips, otherwise it's parked) it usually takes about 8400-9000 miles to request a change. This seemed like proof to me that the Honda system is actually looking at the driving cycle, amount of time in warm-up and so on.

I'm with incavulator so far in thinking this isn't very intelligent at all. Hopefully Thought #2 will be the case and that will change my view of the indicator's usefulness.

Thanks for all the input everyone, this is interesting. I'm just trying to learn all the little details of how this all works... I certainly won't be logging nightly information for much longer.

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[Murrow]

So, get this -- I just checked the oil life on both the dash and on the app and they're now both back up to 100%. I'm truly stumped. I definitely did not reset it.

UPDATE: Now, the app says 95%. I have not checked the dash. What the heck is going on here?

 

[incavulator]

Sounds like a software bug to me. I would let the dealer know about it. If it is a software bug, they won't be able to fix it (unless it is already a known issue). They'll have to inform engineering, where it will take time to find and fix (if it gets sent to engineering and if they decide to assign the resources to it). When (IF) they release a software fix, THEN the dealer can reflash and fix it for you and others who are likely effected, or perhaps it can be done over the air.

As far as the Ford app is concerned, I don't put much faith in those. I have an app for my BS and a couple other branded vehicles and they intermittently provide wrong location, wrong fuel level/distance to empty, etc. Sometimes they seem to lag with reality. I would trust the vehicle more than the app, but if you see the vehicle's oil life is going up without a reset, that doesn't sound right. I WONDER if there is any chance your vehicle received a FOTA (flash over the air)? If so, perhaps the oil life is accidentally getting reset to 100% during that process? Do you know if it received an update recently? Maybe you caught it in the middle of the flash before it "restored" the old value?

All this kind of explains why I just change mine based on mileage. In my experience, the oil change indicators push oil changes beyond the mileage I'm comfortable with (when I change my oil at about 5000 miles, the % life often says it's still got about 50% life remaining). Also, I always question the calculated percentage. Therefore, I prefer to just change them on the "5's" based on the odometer.

 

[petegee77]

I've had my BS BL for two months and 1,100 miles. The oil monitor still says 97%, which seems very high. I'm coming from GM, in which the oil monitor drops 10% every month, even if you don't drive the car at all.

Is it weird for it to still show 97%?

Do these cars have crazy long oil change intervals?

Is it one of those situations in which the oil life drops very slowly at first and then falls off a cliff after a few more miles?

Do you guys follow the oil monitor or ignore it?

Thanks!

I totally ignore it. My wife had a 2014 Malibu. At 1300 miles it was down to 5%. That was it for me. GM gimmick to get you in the shop. Oil and WIX filter every every 5000 miles for me. . Used to do 3500 but these new oils are so much better. Just took my 22 BSBB in for The Works on Tuesday. There was 4989 on the oil since the last change. Oil life indicator said 8% left. Good enough for me.

 

[Quashish]

Took the wife's car for service on Saturday morning. I don't trust dealerships, so I had cut the corner off of the sticker on the oil filter and made a dot with a sharpie so see if they actually changed the filter. I checked and noticed the oil life monitor hadn't been reset, so i reset it leaving the dealership. Parked the car on flat ground and came back later to check the oil level. Removed the cover and looked underneath. They did change the filter. Marked this filter the same way, got 3 more free changes. Here's a size comparison of the two filters mentioned earlier since I have them on the shelf.

 

[Murrow]

I WONDER if there is any chance your vehicle received a FOTA (flash over the air)? If so, perhaps the oil life is accidentally getting reset to 100% during that process? Do you know if it received an update recently? Maybe you caught it in the middle of the flash before it "restored" the old value?

I've wondered this as well, but I haven't seen any sign or notification that it received an OTA update. Am I supposed to get a notification when there's been an update? I do have OTA updates turned on, but they're scheduled for 2:00AM.

Also -- since my Friday update, the oil life dipped down to 99%, then dipped again to 98%, and now is back at 99%.

 

[Major Kong]

sparkplug
yes kong
activate the intelligent life monitior
mrs kong is still as beautiful as the day we met
right you are sparkplug
right you are

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