It’s a simple question for owners of the 2006 Honda Civic: what is the oil type and capacity? Depending on your situation, you may have different oil change intervals, with city driving or driving in dusty conditions requiring a more frequent oil change than clean highway driving.
Changing your oil helps keep your engine operating efficiently and smoothly. The 2006 Honda Civic has two engines, and it’s good to consult your owner’s manual for details on your specific engine. Here’s the regular owner’s manual or hybrid manual if yours has disappeared.
The 2006 Honda Civic delivers hundreds of thousands of miles to get you where you’re going, which is a lot of work for your engine. In this article, we’ll discuss the oil type and capacity for each engine, including why oil type matters.
2006 Honda Civic What is the Oil Type and Capacity?
Among the innovations of the 2006 Honda Civic is an Engine Oil Life Display, which appears under your dial indicators. This display tracks the condition of your engine oil by percent, alerting you when it should be changed. For infrequent usage, the oil should still be changed at least yearly.
When the Oil Life % message changes to Service Oil Life %, you should change your oil very soon. But what if you bump and hold the reset button? In this scenario, you should then change your oil every 3,000 miles, so check your maintenance records for the last mileage.
Even if you expect to have a long period of time before your next expected oil change, check your oil level every week. The 2006 Honda Civic has been known to develop oil leaks, and you don’t want to run your vehicle with low engine oil, which can cause damage.
When you’re changing the oil in your 2006 Honda Civic, always check to make sure the oil you’re using has the API certification mark to protect your engine and ensure good performance. The regular Civic engine takes premium-grade 5W-20 while the hybrid Civic engine takes premium-grade 0W-20.
It’s important to note that the two engines have different oil capacities, which is good information to have when you get to the store and need to know how much oil to purchase. The capacities are:
- Standard 1.8L I4: 4.2 U.S. Quarts including filter change
- Hybrid 1.3L I4: 3.4 U.S. Quarts including filter change
Oil Type Explained
API, 5W-20, 0W-20, premium-grade: What does it all mean, anyway? In this section, we’ll discuss these terms, including specific situations where you may want to contact a local dealership to get some additional feedback on recommendations.
API stands for the American Petroleum Institute, which has created standards for classifying engine oil usage, including oil viscosity, or the thickness or thinness of the oil. If it’s too thick, it doesn’t flow well in cold. Too thin, and it burns up and fails to protect your engine properly.
Honda does not directly recommend moving away from its recommended oil weights, which we’ll discuss momentarily, but if you live in extreme temperatures, say Tucson, Arizona’s 120° F or northern Minnesota’s cold below -20° F, call a local dealership for recommendations.
When dealing with oil weights, 5W-20 is designed to work well with both high summer heat and low winter cold, providing 20-weight oil protection in the summer and 5-weight oil equivalency in the winter for smooth operation. 0W-20 simply reaches a 0-weight oil viscosity in wintertime instead of 5-weight.
Why Synthetic Oil?
The 2006 Honda Civic is approved for either regular or synthetic oil, and though the store can carry a mind-boggling display of oils, the biggest difference will be regular versus synthetic oils, which can have some benefits and drawbacks.
Both products are petroleum products, undergoing fractioning and a highly technical process to refine it. Regular oil has been used for over one hundred years to keep vehicle engines lubricated and on the move without damage and mostly does a decent job.
Synthetic oil goes through a longer refinement process, providing a purer product that tends to remain stable for longer periods of time. This allows it to better protect your engine while delivering superior performance compared to regular oil.
There has been no global standard developed for synthetic oils, though most have a blend of highly-purified base oil, a carrier oil to keep everything suspended evenly in the mix and proprietary additives. “Fully Synthetic” is simply a marketing term and denotes no further benefit to your Civic’s engine.
Though many more modern vehicles specify only using synthetic oil, the 2006 Honda Civic doesn’t make this requirement, so you will need to decide whether the additional levels of protection and performance are worth the higher cost of an oil change.
Know Your Vehicle
Knowing every system in your 2006 Honda Civic isn’t necessary to be able to properly maintain it with the right parts and supplies, but keeping up with your maintenance schedule helps you get more miles from your car. You can learn a lot from the Vehicle History model database.
