Oil change periodicity e280cdi

[Murff]

Hi, is it worth reducing the oil periodicity from 15000 to say 10000 to help maintain the engine in top form. Currently using mobil1 ESP oil and it doesn't particularly seem very robust, unlike the Castrol edge I used to put in my Beemer diesel (prior to jumping on the Mercedes bandwagon!)

 

[WOODYTHEWISE]

You will get varied views, yes, no , perhaps. I change my oil and filter every 3000 miles or six months. Some will say its a waste of time and money, however, its my car, my time, my money. There may not be provable benefits of an early change, however, it gives me peace of mind. I also change my tyres at 3.5mm tread depth.
The oil is the life blood of the engine. The tyres are the only thing keeping me on the road.

 

[mescaline]

You will get varied views, yes, no , perhaps. I change my oil and filter every 3000 miles or six months. Some will say its a waste of time and money, however, its my car, my time, my money. There may not be provable benefits of an early change, however, it gives me peace of mind. I also change my tyres at 3.5mm tread depth.
The oil is the life blood of the engine. The tyres are the only thing keeping me on the road.

It's not that you are wasting time or money, it's that you are hurting your engine that is the problem. Did you know that at that mileage oil you are pouring in is way more dirty than the oil that is already in the car? Takes a couple of cycles for fleece filter to do its job.

I change my oil at 15 or 20 000km, depends on cold starts or how i drive. Aral 0W-40 here, compatible with particulate filters.

 

[mobeyone]

Good question, is there an official MB response?

 

[markjay]

It's not that you are wasting time or money, it's that you are hurting your engine that is the problem. Did you know that at that mileage oil you are pouring in is way more dirty than the oil that is already in the car? Takes a couple of cycles for fleece filter to do its job.....

That's the first time I hear this - dirty oil out of the can? I don't think this is even possible with full-synth.

Common wisdom has it that frequent oil changes are good for the engine and bad for your pocket, so it's about finding a balance that you can live with. Haynes also maintains that oil should be changed at higher frequencies than the manufacturer stipulates.

On the other hand... while frequent oil changes will no doubt extend the engine's life - will you still own the car when it hits 200k miles?

With modern cars being owned typically around 2 to 3 years, frequent oil changes usually mean that you are making a donation towards an unknown person that will own it in the far future.

What's worse... with the way cars depreciate, I suspect that very few cars actually get to see their engines wear down to a point when they need a rebuild... the vast majority of cars will loose value and get scrapped much earlier than that.

So my view is that frequent oil changes are very good for the engine - in theory. The engine is not likely to ever benefit from the reduced wear as the car will get scrapped before it reaches that point.

As for new car owners.... anyone keeping a new car for 3 years would have no logical reason whatsoever to change oil sooner than the dashboard tells them to. There will be no difference that they can notice during their ownership of the car.

This obviously does not apply to anyone running a commercial fleet that can hit 300k in 3 years... under these circumstance I would change the oil as many times as possible.

 

[markjay]

Good question, is there an official MB response?

iirc my service book says that cars used for frequent stop start driving (e.g. taxis, police cars, royal mail cars) should have an interim oil change between services.

 

[Murff]

I think you're right with regards to finding the right balance and obviously how you drive your car makes a big difference (frequent short journeys etc).
I found an interesting article on the Internet that said changing oil too frequently can damage the engine due to the high levels of detergent in modern engine oils damaging seals.
I plan on keeping my car for the long term so intervals of 7500-10000 depending on how I drive is the plan.

 

[Rory]

Takes a couple of cycles for fleece filter to do its job.

Maybe they're used elsewhere, but UK dealers never use the fleece filters.

On the other hand... while frequent oil changes will no doubt extend the engine's life - will you still own the car when it hits 200k miles?

I think that's the key question - you see a lot of stuff about frequent oil changes on US forums but they do tend to keep their cars for very high mileages.

I don't know what the cause is, but you do see oil analysis charts which show increased wear with new oil, then it levels off, then increases again.

 

[mobeyone]

What about a reduced annual change or mileage whichever comes first?

I don't think there is a known v6 cdi out there with stellar miles? Or is there?

I may drop mine to 10k as I do plan on keeping it for at least 5 years. Ideal replacement would be a current c class estate or the facelift 212 as my next car.

Or a Beemer)

 

[Deleted member 37751]

Every car that I buy I get a 'big' service done as soon as I buy it, just for piece of mind.

I've never kept a car more than 6,000 miles, but if I did I would change it every 8,000.

I can't believe this VAG thing with 20,000 mile service intervals and no-one that I speak to of a mechanical background agrees neither.

 

[Rory]

I've never kept a car more than 6,000 miles,

Blimey - that must cost you a few bob!

I can't believe this VAG thing with 20,000 mile service intervals and no-one that I speak to of a mechanical background agrees neither.

Mine went to 18K for its first service, although for the last couple it's got to 2yrs first, at around 14K miles. It doesn't even use any oil between service to allow me to add some clean oil.

I asked an MB mechanic if I should change more regularly and he seemed completely baffled by why I might want to do that.

The saving grace is the car tends to only be used for long runs.

 

[markjay]

My previous Vauxhall (MY 2001) had 20k service interval, and my Renault (MY 2005) 18k, albeit 'or one year' in both cases. And both officially run on semi-synth (i.e. not even full-synth).

I guess it's based on the assumption that cars that do 20k a year will do most of the mileage on Motorways.

But again, it's more to do with tempting fleet buyers. And, it would be foolish of a car manufacturer to stipulate oil change every 6 months if the only benefit is that the engine will make it to 300k rather than just 200k - very few new car buyers will actually care about that.

But there's a bigger issue here - maintenance scheduled vary considerably between manufacturers, in spite of the technical similarity of the affected products. This clearly demonstrates that service schedule are a 'guesstimate' at best.

MB stipulates brake fluid change every 2 years, Renault every 3. I doubt that Renault have something in their break fluid or brake system that makes their brake fluid last longer, especially as the recommendation by the manufacturers are (with few exceptions) not model-specific but across the board.

Another example is spark plugs - MB say every 4 years, Toyota say every 62k miles (presumably translated from 100k KM) regardless of age, and Renault say they are good for life. Yet - with few exceptions, e.g. Iridium or quad-electrode plugs - the technology is pretty much the same. It seems that MB's consideration of preventing the spark plug thread from corroding is not shared by other manufacturers - and they all have alloy heads as well.

Or ATF - some boxes are 'sealed for life' (Vauxahll, Renault, and BMW), while other should be changed according to schdule - is there really such a big difference in the design of the autobox or the make of the ATF?

I used to do some work for a factory that made filters (fuel and oil) for manufacturers, i.e. Tier-1 supplier. The filters are all made from the same paper element, and after coming off the production line are painted in the respective manufacturer's colours and logo (e.g. Vauxhall, VW, etc). Yet again once these filters make their way into the cars the replacement schedules vary considerably.

Another issue is to do with the use of mileage - is that, as anyone working with diggers and earth mover will know, engines care more about working hours than mileage covered.

So in short a '20k miles or 12 months' statement is at best an educated guess by the manufacturer. If you know no better, then I would suggest to stick to the manufacturer's (very broad) recommendations. With regards new cars, sticking to manufacturer's schedule will also help keep its value come sale time, which is a good thing by itself, even if you as the first owner may never know the difference or directly benefit from adhering to strict maintenance regime.

 

[tanzy_uk]

I was led to believe that the polymers that are found in modern engin oils start to break down from first use over a period of time and not specificaly mileage covered and that this is the reson you have to change the oil at a set period. However there is a finite amount of gunk that the oil can hold and oil filter can operate with and this is the reason the oil and filter has to be replaced at mileage intervals. I would agree that this is a best guess of manufacturers as every car will be driven differantly and for differant reasons.

Incidently on previos cars I have owned (ashamed to say generaly those originating from Dagenham) I always used to put in a cheap oil for a few thousand miles befor going back to a decent oil, generaly magnatex. One of them was going after 170k miles so I must have been doin something right. Won't be doing that for a while in my S211 though .

Tanz

 

[twixfits]

Just stumbled across this thread... A guy that I use to work with is now employed by BP and a while back we were having a similar conversation....
Changing oil, water etc will be the thing of the past, engines will be sealed for life.When a engine fails it will be easily swapped out and recycled as one lump. (You may of read about the ceramic and plastic engine blocks a few years back)
Several car companies are working on this technology and any reductions in waste management saves money and sends out a good environmental image.
The 100,000 mile / 7 year oil capability is already here, as we have very large compressors that run 24/7 at very high RPM for well over a year on the same oil. 11KV Electrical transformer the oil is changed every 5 years depending on the load(trust me this is a harsh environment) just to name a couple of examples of >100k miles.
Changing oil every 3000 miles is really not needed, we use to do that in the 60s -70's in our Morris Minors and Ford Populars, even then the engines would only last 60K miles before needing a rebuild ..lol.. Engine and oil technology has moved on....

 

[panason1c]

I dont believe there is any benefit in changing the oil earlier than the specified schedule as long as a top quality spec oil is used........I change mine every 13k miles (as per the vehicles service indicator) I have always used mobil1 0w40 and when i drain the oil after 13k it feels as viscous and slippery as when it was first put in. I have now covered 225k miles and the engine runs as sweetly as ever and doesnt use any oil.

 

[markjay]

I was thinking... my 2005 Renault covered 12k, and has always been serviced.

Let's say I never serviced the car... apart form brakes of course... no oil change, no filter change.

If the air and fuel filter didn't get clogged, the car wouldn't actually break down. The oil filter and engine oil would obviously be in poor state, but... let's say that with regular oil changes the engine would make it to 200k.. with no oil changes, it will suffer horrific wear and give up the ghost at a mere 10%, i.e. at 20k... well I wouldn't know about it. The car will never make it to 20k, not in my ownership anyway. So in all probability if I didn't spend any money on servicing it, not much would have been different.. perhaps higher fuel consumption due to clogged filters, but given the annual mileage (around 2k) the actual cost will be negligible.

Now a Renault service isn't cheap - around £200 for a minor service and double that for a major one - so we spent a pretty penny on servicing so far.

In this particular case there would be no commercial sense in servicing the car - ever. Food for thought...

 

[twixfits]

food for thought... some of our sales reps apply that very formula... lol.

My Golf TDi has the long life +20K service intervals with out issues, just hit 220K whilst wifes petrol 1.4 Audi A2 has just made 163k again on the long life 20-25K servicing intervals.. Both cars sound like new and the oil looks like oil on the dipstick.

If I changed my oil every 3k thats a 127 oil changes, 1149 litres of oil for both cars (not including the C43)down the drain, sorry I mean recycle center.

There are over 33 million cars on the UK roads.... what if they all changed their oil at 3K ....... some more food for thought

 

[renault12ts]

I had a C180 which I ran for 3 years and put 40,000 miles on. I got rid of it 3 years ago. And I noticed it on sale again at the garage I px'd it at.

During my ownership it was not serviced...never. But it's still going strong...at 16 years old.

 

[mbenz1]

For diesel cars, as soon as you put in new oil, within abt 15-30 mins, it turns black, so it is important to change the oil for diesel cars at short milleage intervals (less than 10000 miles, I think). The diesel fuel is naturally more dirty than petrol, due to that, the soot from the combustion of diesel somehow escapes into the oil, hence black oil. Doing oil changes in diesel cars every 12 - 15000 miles is the main reason i personally think, for high number of diesel cars being noisy and not driving as smooth. I have known many people who have changed their oil on their diesel cars at long intervals, (around 15000 miles) and their engines do not perform as well, in terms of comfort and smooth engine running - maybe it could be due to long interval oil changes??.

rest everyone has their own opinion...

 

[tanzy_uk]

My car has done 74k in 3 years, it has been serviced at the correct intervals by MB, I bought the car three months ago. I am heartened by the fact that you could only do this amount of mileage by clocking up on main trunk roads so it has had good constant revs mileage, I envisage however that I will do only apx 5k a year in the car, so I will be changing the oil when it doesnt have too much gunk in it.

It would be intresting to know how much the polymers in the oil have broken down over time as aposed to mileage.

Tanz