Honda CR-V Oil Dilution (2017-2018): What Owners Report

Details in the 410 reports for 2017-2018. The last column shows how often the tag was right in a random sample of 60 reports read by hand.

Honda dealer messages and bulletins published by NHTSA (each date links to the document):

Source: NHTSA complaints stored by CarTold, queried October 29, 2026; Honda documents from NHTSA's manufacturer-communications library. Report details are keyword matches, not NHTSA classifications.

What owners see. On these cars, the oil level climbs between changes instead of dropping, and the oil smells of gasoline. Honda's first dealer message describes the same symptom: oil reading above the full mark on 2017-18 CR-Vs with the 1.5-liter turbo. Its October 2018 bulletin links the problem to very short trips in extreme cold. In some cases it can raise the oil level and cause misfires.

It is a 2017-2018 story. The 2017 model year brought an all-new CR-V and, on the EX trim and above, the first turbocharged engine offered in a CR-V. The base LX kept a 2.4-liter engine without a turbo, and that matters when you shop. Oil-dilution reports jump from 7 for 2016 to 198 for 2017 and 212 for 2018, then fall to 29 for 2019. Every Honda document listed above names the 2017-18 CR-V, along with the 2016-18 Civic. Using the same text pattern, the 2016-2018 Civic has about 48 matching reports. That Civic figure was not hand-checked and covers all Civic engines, so treat it as rough.

Cold weather keeps coming up. Honda's first campaign covered five cold-weather states. By January 2019 its list of campaign states had grown to more than 20. Owners in warmer states filed reports too, so cold weather and short trips seem to make the problem more likely without being the only factor.

Owners noticed it early. Most of these complaints were filed in 2018 and 2019, while the cars were nearly new. Few reports give usable mileage. Among the 41 that give an odometer reading, the median is about 5,300 miles, and 26 are under 10,000. The 19 that say how far the car had gone since its last oil change give a median of about 1,000 miles, ranging from 400 to 5,070. These samples are small and the mileages were self-reported, so read them as rough.

How serious it gets. Most reports describe a smell and a high dipstick reading. Some describe misfires, warning lights, stalling or lost power, the same drivability problems Honda's 2019 bulletins name. NHTSA's own fields on the 410 reports record one crash, one fire and five injuries. CarTold's records hold no NHTSA investigation or safety recall for CR-V oil dilution. Honda handled it through product updates and a warranty extension.

The warranty extension has almost certainly lapsed. The April 2019 extension ran for six years from the original sale date, with no mileage limit. A 2018 CR-V first sold in 2019 was covered until 2025 at the latest, so by late 2026 nearly every 2017-2018 car is past that point. Don't assume a car for sale today is covered, and ask a Honda dealer to look up the VIN.

Three short owner reports, quoted as submitted (unverified reports to NHTSA):

How to check a 2017-2018 CR-V for oil dilution:

1. Confirm the engine. In the US, EX, EX-L and Touring trims have the 1.5-liter turbo, and the LX has the 2.4-liter. Check the trim badge, the window sticker or a VIN decode.
2. Ask a Honda dealer to run the VIN. Ask whether the oil-dilution product update (bulletins 18-114 or 18-124) or the warranty-extension work (19-032 or 19-037) was done, and ask for any engine work Honda has on record. Get the answer in writing.
3. Check the dipstick on a level surface with the engine cold. Wipe it, reinsert it fully and read it. Oil clearly above the upper mark is a warning sign, especially soon after an oil change. Note the date and mileage on the last oil-change sticker.
4. Smell the dipstick and the oil filler cap. A strong gasoline smell is the most common detail in owners' reports.
5. Read the oil-change records. Look for regular changes. Extra changes soon after a previous one, or notes about a high oil level, suggest the problem showed up.
6. Ask how the car was used. Years of short trips in a cold climate fit the pattern in Honda's bulletins and owners' reports.
7. Start it cold and test the heater. Watch the temperature gauge and see how long the cabin takes to warm up. Slow warm-up is something owners describe.
8. Scan for stored codes. Ask your mechanic to check for misfire codes P0300-P0304 and P0172, the codes named in Honda's bulletins. If something looks wrong, ask whether a used-oil analysis to measure fuel content is worth doing.

These are owner reports, not lab results. We checked a random sample of 60 matched reports by hand, and 59 described oil dilution on the owner's own car. The totals are still approximate. A low count for 2019-2021 means fewer owners reported the problem. It does not prove those engines never dilute their oil. The mileage figures come from small groups of self-reported numbers. Complaint totals also depend on how many cars were sold and how long they have been on the road. CarTold has no data on how many CR-Vs received the update or how well it worked. We dropped tags we could not check reliably, such as stalling, cold-weather mentions and engine replacements. Bulletin details are paraphrased from Honda's documents. The documents themselves are the authority, and a Honda dealer decides eligibility.

Queried from CarTold's copy of NHTSA's complaint, recall, investigation and manufacturer-communication records on October 29, 2026. A complaint is counted when its text explicitly links fuel or gasoline to the oil, mentions oil dilution, describes an oil level that is rising or above the full mark, or describes a dipstick or oil that smells of fuel. A dipstick or smell mention alone, without a fuel or oil-level signal, is not counted. Reports that say the problem is not fuel in the oil are excluded. Each complaint is counted once, by its NHTSA ODI number, under the model year it was filed for. The share is matching complaints divided by all complaints for that model year.

Accuracy check. We read 60 randomly chosen matched reports by hand. 59 (98%) described oil dilution on the owner's car. The exception mentioned the issue only as something Honda knew about. An earlier, looser version of the pattern scored 59 of 60 as well, and its one false match, a report about driver-assist warnings that ruled out fuel in the oil, is now excluded. The detail tags were checked against the same sample. Mileages are numbers next to "miles" in the text, kept only where the wording made clear which one was meant. Engine and trim facts come from Honda's press materials, and bulletin details from Honda documents published by NHTSA. The queries and scripts are kept with the article's data pack.

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