Changing Oil

[ronnie0738]

I looked at the Service schedule A and it says to service the car every 10k miles. I still feel wary to leave the motor oil in there for that long...im used to changing it every 5-7k with synthetic and 3-5k with conventional oil. How often do you guys change your oil?

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[Brunelleschi]

I still haven't changed mine and I just hit 7.5k. I am a little wary too, but i have been reassured my my sales guy as well as many other members that these cars are built for oil changes at 10K intervals. As long as my warranty is fine, I am not going to worry about it.

[ronnie0738]

hmm...the stealership said the same to me. i've ran the car for a little over 5k since the last oil change and the oil color is dark brown. I usually change it at this point.

Also, how do you measure the oil level in this car? I tried what it said in the manual (run engine at normal temp, turn off, wait 5 minutes, and put key to position 2), but it keeps saying "turn on ignition" and when I do it says "cannot read when engine on". I turn it off and it say "turn on ignition".

[bajaiman]

Does the oil change has to be at 10K miles intervals regardless of how old is the car??....say for example the car is 2 years old but only travelled 5K miles... or do I have to change oil every year?...

[cschow]

I"m by no means a MB expert, as I only owned my C32 since December 2003, but prior to that I had a BMW 330i and for the BMW, the computer estimates a number of miles you have left before, for example, an oil service. The estimated miles takes into account how hard and how you drive your car. Thus, while the oil change intervals always begins counting down from 15K miles right after an oil change, if you drive the car hard and/or on frequent short trips instead of longer trips, the milage will count down faster, sometimes significantly faster, than the rate you put on actual miles.

That being said, the BMW maintenance procedure also specs a max time between oil changes, so if you drove your car only a limited distance over a year, you'd still get an oil change for free at the dealer during the free maintenance period becuase the oil change schedule is spec based on the flexible service indicator, or 1-year, which ever happens sooner. I'd imagine MB is pretty similar in procedure.

As to how to measure the oil level, turn off the engine, wait 5 minutes, then switch the ignition to the point where all accessories come back on, but do not actually start the engine. Thats when you can measure oil level, but the MFD only tells you if the oil level is "ok" or whether it needs more oil.

Alternatively, a much more accurate way is to use the "dyno" mode, where the MFD will tell you, for example, that you currently have, for example, 7.1 quarts of oil. You can do a search on "dyno" mode to get instructions on how to get into and out of that mode (different for 2002's and 2003+ I think).

[ronnie0738]

cschow - thanks for the info. i've tried what u described, but it would never measure the oil level. i think ill try the dyno mode reading. i just got my c32 at the end of november.