BKLYN_C

How about half of a quart for every 1000 miles?

I always thought the engine shouldnt blow oil through the exhaust, but I was wrong. No BS, just learned it myself from my SA

During the last year i noticed the car started burning oil or blowing it out, or rather both. So few days ago I took it for B service and mentioned the oil issue to SA. There is no leaks under the engine just oil excessive residue on the exhaust, i went through 4 quarts in a year or 11,000 miles. So a day later the car is ready but about the oil consumption he confirms they didnt find any oily spots on the engine. I ask, so how about the oil in the exhaust, did you check valve seals for leaks? He replies with "Oh, its ok for a car to burn 1/2 of quart per 1,000 miles". After this answer I couldnt say anything, just got into the car and left the place.

Maybe I dont get something.... 15 years ago i had a 12 yo pontiac with 200K miles on V6 engine, it burnt 2 quarts ever 3K miles. Now 3 yo Mercedes with 45K has the same standard. Is there somethign wrong with my perception or it is because the car is still under the warrantee and checking/fixing this would be too expensive for the dealer?

advans

oh alex, my car burns something about a quart per 1000 mile.

I fill the car up according to MB specs when oil change, pan measures 7.5-7.8q as stated in the book,

by the time its 3k miles later, its about 6.0-6.3q from the pan.

there is a lot of residue on my exhaust!

c230K415

This explains all the black powdery substance covering my entire rear-end. .
My tips have been turning more and more black every time I wash the residue off, but now the residue doesn't even come off anymore. My last oil change the car seemed to have "ate up" a quart after 5000 miles. This time at 5000 miles, it "ate up" 0.3-0.4 quarts.

scottisha

I think the "black powdery substance" is probably from your car running rich.
If you have an excessive amount, then maybe you have another issue, but I bet it's just the richness of the air/fuel leaving that mess.

Do you accelerate pretty hard?

Scott

RipN Ray

I don't believe this!

My other car is a 93 BMW 525I with 289,000 miles and it doesn't burn oil. It's always at the top every 3,000 miles.

Glyn M Ruck

Using a controlled amount of oil in an engine is not of major consequence & not necessarily a cause for worry. As long as compression is within specification and valve to guide leak is not causing huge deposit build up on the valve tulips (easily checked with a boroscope) I would not worry about it.

Mercedes Benz AG, to my knowledge, have not committed themselves recently as to what "reasonable" oil consumption is for PC engines. In the past when they were using chamfered, MOS2 coated rings they had a rule of thumb that as long as oil consumption did not exceed 1% of fuel consumption things were fine - that's quite a lot of oil
In the modern vehicle what is probably of most concern is what oil going through the exhaust system is doing to the cat converter. Modern MB approved oils are designed to be cat converter friendly and not poison the catalyst. Engines are also designed to control oil consumption a lot better than they did for the same reason. Competent exhaust gas analysis is the only thing that is going to tell you whether your vehicles oil consumption is being detrimental to the cat converter.

American engine designs have always been very "dry" in this regard versus their European counterparts

BKLYN_C

So basically as long as i use mobil 1 i am fine with any consumption.
Not sure about it. Monday i will send MBUSA a latter with the description. If If i will get the same response but with signature that will be fine with me.

Oh, by the way, this time they fulled it 5w-40 in difference from 5w-30 used always before.

BKLYN_C

Hey!

Tell you the truth, the further it goes, the more convinced i become that my next car will not be mercedes. Dont get me wrong, the car is great, not too many problems with it, but general impression is that I dont want another MB. Every time i point to an engine issue nothing gets done, even as simple as noisy engine belt. But they are very good at resetting the ECU. Can only imagine what they would do and charge if i reported this oil thing when the car goes off the warrantee. Of course, i dramatize and exaggerate it, but thats how i feel

amanonfire

My car burned oil for about a year, was told its normal, until the occasional misfire turned into a constant misfire and I needed a new block cause the piston was damaged.

If your car is burning that much oil, its time to get rid of it.

BlackLiquorish8

hey buddy i see your car in port all the time. how you been??? i feel the same thing with rallye mercedes sometimes they never get anything done and all they have is excuse

advans

haha its okay alex,

I'm not gonna be getting another MB anytime soon. I lost confidence in MB. Unless I can afford a pimp MB, no way I'm getting another one yet. I'm just moving to other brands and have them make me hate it too. One on the list is BMW.

BKLYN_C

Once my wife comes home and says some other MB followed her all the way to the house. Bet it was you

BKLYN_C

Not sure about the BMW either. Lately read the bimmerfest a lot

advans

lol, my family has been a MB/Lexus family. I heard the "new" BMWs were better

BKLYN_C

Went through all the service paper work i have gathered, and want to correct my self. The recommended and normally used oil is 0w40. The spec says 5 quarts of it. This time they poured 5w40. Isnt it sort of statement "yes, you might have some issues, but we will sacrifice the life of your engine by using oil which is thicker when cold to keep you happy with the oil consumption. Not much just 5%".

Oh, and the best part is that i was charged for 9 (nine) quarts of oil. Isnt it nice to suddenly learn that MB changed the specs and now your car has to be filled with almost double amount of oil?
Will see what their NJ headquarters will say on Monday.

BKLYN_C

All the cars will have problems and break at some point. The issue is how the manufacturers and their dealers handle the complaints. Their Manhattan facility was supposed to be top of the line, or so i thought
Doubt any BMW dealer will do anything more than MB does. Lexus might be a bit differnet

whalebird

Its very common to consume oil. In fact the synthetic you should be running evaporates at a higher rate than conventional oil. I would not however assume that oil is exiting your exhaust. Another outside sorce like the road or an external engine/trans/diff/coolant leak is more likely than oil blow-by. If you were passing a quart(or even 1/2 qt)of oil every 1000 miles you would probably have other problems and resultant warning lights. Your dealer can do an oil consumption test and also do a compression check with the Benz factory scanner. Just do the planet a favor and kill yourself and your car.

BKLYN_C

First of all do a favor to yourself. Before making any assumptions read the original post where it clearly states about oil in the exhaust. Then you can come up with the favor to the planet and kill yourself or f... yourself, no one cares

whalebird

I was trying to do you a favor and give you a little insight into what may be going on with your car. My 22 years experiance as a MB certified master tech (and Porsche) has allowed me to experiance lots of different issues like the one you describe. All I got from the original post is, yes you say there is oil in the exhaust, but after your conversation with the SA (who may have little technical experiance) you just walked away and took his excuse as truth and then promptly got on this forum to bash him and the cars we enjoy. I doubt you would know what you are looking at anyway. There are lots of info on this forum about PVC issues and other possible causes for excessive oil consumption. I would, as a tech, invertigate this issue if your car was my reponsability. Simply saying it is normal is not my first thought as a consciencious technician, however it may be the result of some predictable factor like oil type/viscosity etc.
I suspect your SA was really saying F*** you and your car as your hostility has probably alienated him and his tech as it has me.

BlackLiquorish8

HAHA yes it was me!!! i was like wtf why arent you stopping!!!! yea i saw her at the gulf station i didnt know it was her tho o well lol

scottisha

BTW,
The last person I would trust, is a SA. They are commissioned employees and on more than one occassion in Orlando, my SA tried to say I needed something prematurely. For example, when I went in for my warranty work (air bag and cam sensors) She said, "you need rear brakes ASAP" I said, "really...OK, well...I'll have my indie tech take care of that for me"....She went on to say how little knowledge he probably had and how he didn't have access to the same info she did. Basically telling me I shouldn't use anyone but the dealer.
I said, "Nah, you guys have a lot of overhead that he doesn't have, so his prices are literally half of yours" She treated me like crap after that.
I put another 14k miles on my rear brakes. Just had them changed two days ago. So, if an SA tells you it's normal to consume that much oil, I would go and get a second opinion. I've never burned that much oil. I add 1 qt between scheduled oil changes and that didn't start happening until the 70-80k mile mark on the odometer.

Scott

advans

sheldon is a stalker.

or.

alex turned into a woman!

BKLYN_C

Gary, be careful with that

BKLYN_C

I dont know how you came to the conclusion there was any confrontation between me and the SA. Somehow you concluded i took SA's words for the truth. Well, there was no confrontation or hostility of any kind. I didnt question SA's words because I wanted to avoid it. And after 3 years of dealing with my SA i know he has the know-how. If you go through my previous posts you will find that I never said any bad word about the MB of Manhattan and my SA, only positive remarks prior to this.

You claim I cant differentiate between oil and coolant and have no idea what the cars are. In response to this i can only say that a lot of people on this w203 forum know me in person and what I do and dont know about my C230 and cars in general.
On the same note, I would like to question your "master tech with 22 years of experience". As the one you claim to be you should know what are the MB officially accepted numbers for oil consumption. Will you shed any light on it?
As a hight experienced MB/Porsche tech, or any other make, you would probably know how the oil can get into the cylinders and pipes. Not too many choices here
1. Leaking turbo/supercharger. Well, this has to be dismissed. The car went through the vent hose recall at the same time. As I was told by the same SA, they had to remove and partially disassemble the SC. If there was any oil leak they would find it. Another simple way to confirm it - look into the throttle body. The dealer hesitated to to it, so i did it myself today. Its all dry like pampered baby's a$$
2. Piston rings. I feel like dismissing this one as well as there is no smoke from exhaust. But exhaust has oily substance in it which means the oil is not fully burning in the cylinders, but is blown out. Should have delear done the compression test? This whouldnt have taken him more that 1 hour or just stick a strobe light. Unfortunately I dont have the means to do it myself
3. And the last. Valve seals. Usually they leak when engine is not running, cold. Starting the engine will first blow the oil out and then burn all that remains. This whole thing fits well into the general picture. But it would be very time consuming to confirm and fix it.


Why I am bashing about it? Very simple. Oil is a single most important factor of engine life and performance. The vehicle is still covered by the warrantee which was included into the invoice price. So, if a client has a concern, dont tell him everything is fine and give some numbers which turn the 3 years old car into an oil guzzler. I bet if this happened post warratee and payed by cash, they would go above and beyond to fix the issue. Also, I am very interested to know how they managed to fit 9 quarts of oil into little m271 engine

Glyn M Ruck

Wrong - Your comment - "In fact the synthetic you should be running evaporates at a higher rate than conventional oil." is wrong !!!

The Synthetic he should be running is a low volatility low NOACK product. Low volatility is required to achieve a DB 229.5 approval. 229.5 oils certainly do NOT evapourate at a higher rate than conventional oils or you would suffer oil thickenting due to the light ends coming off