Dlau

Hi,

My E500 is on its way to my dealer, I know the mercedes has the so call flexible maintainence system that it monitors the usage of the car and recommend a oil change or maintainance schedule, and from my friends word, it last roughly 9500 - 10500 miles between oil changes. I know Mercedes paid for the maintainance during the warranty period. But does 9500 miles sound too much? You know, the old rules is change your oil every 3000-5000 miles. Does some of you change your oil before the car tells you to?

Thanks!

awiner

Yup... I change it every 5,000 miles.

FInality

MB uses synthetic oil in there cars hence the need for fewer oil changes.

Callaway

Plus they use a very high quality oil filter as well.

awiner

Problem is that the oil filter is TINY ...


If you are leasing your car and intend to trade it in after 2-4 years, stick with the FSS recommended service.

However, if you plan to keep your car past its warranty, change the oil every 5000 miles for piece of mind. That is my plan and my personal opinion.

KShortill

I still follow the old rule: change the oil the earlier of every 5000 miles or six months. Works like a charm for me.

hpilot

MB just settled a $118 million class action law suit in regards to this practice. They have agreed to extend the engine warranty for oil damage to 150,000 miles and ten years. This is only for 1998 - 2001 MY cars. I find this interesting after all the assurances they gave that 10,000 mile oil changes were no problem!

bmms8

yea i heard about that, what oil do you guys suggest by any chance

Dema

I also read about that and as I understood that was a problem for people used regular oil and followed 10k miles recommendation. MB mistakenly omitted the requirement for synthetic oil. Regarding synthetic oil it can last up to 20K miles without any harm to engine, as MB's speaking.

Barney

It is important to understand the MB lawsuit. It actually supports how good the synthetic oils are in that the only cars that had any problems were there ones who used traditional motor oil (an error though not spelled out clearly enough in advance by MB) but still followed the FSS. In effect, the FSS was fooled by the incorrect oil. I've read some articles indicating the FSS system is quite complex and takes a lot of parameters into account. Also, depending on conditions, I believe the range it recommends for service varies more widely, say from 7,500 to 12,500 miles.

I'm sure there is no harm in changing it more often but, from people I've spoken with, it is overkill. Remember, it wasn't too long ago that recommending a tune-up or spark plug change at 100,000 miles would have seemed idiotic.

cte430

my E500 is my 3rd E and my service advisor recommends every 5K if you bought the car and follow the computer if you lease. Makes sense to me, and that's what I have been doing. That way you end up paying for every other oil change. Not bad for some peace of mind.

500AMG

But won't the system reset after the 5K oil change...so the next one the computer would say is 15K...you would end up paying for every oil change

hpilot

Mine didn't, and I changed every 3000 miles. It doesn't give me a lot of confidence in the system!

jim256

If you reset the FSS, then you will start over towards a new 10,000 mile window, but if you just change the oil, you'll see the interval extend somewhat due to the new oil's effect on circulating impurities, however it will stay generally in the range for the free change.

The dealer may also give you a free service at annual intervals even if you have not met the FSS criteria.

I have stuck with the FSS/annual recommendations on three cars now, albeit low mileage and short ownership, but I have always felt the 8.5 qt oil capacity on the V6 and V8, now coupled with synthetic, diminishes the wear and dirt significantly as compared with normal US engines with 4 to 5 qt capacities.

JustinTRW

My dealer told me there is nothing to "reset", but I'm not sure what the real deal is. In any case, I just did a change at 5k and FSS continues to tell me I will be needing a change at 10k. So it hasn't really affected my freebies at all.

guanabara

3000 or 5000 miles oil change?

Finally I found an oil that can safely be used while following the FSS change intervals. It is made in the USA, but was formulated to meet the tighter european cars specifications for evaporation, friction protection, cooling characteristics, etc.

For more details read on

I found out tha Amsoil now offers an oil for European cars that exceeds the latest MB specifications ( MB229.5, 229.3, 229.1 and BMW LL-01/98 among others) .

If you drive a lot over 1 year (i.e. >10000 miles) it is recommended that you replace the paper filter at least once each 6 months and top off the oil.
MB recommends a new filter element (fleece?) for longer change intervals.

Unfortunately the best Supersyn oil in the US stores and dealers is not as good as the ones used in europe for the tight engine engineering specs to allow those cars to perform the way they do and to fly on the long inter country autobahns for so many thousands of miles between oil changes.

The only match I found in the US market is made by a company called AMSOIL. They started the marketing of synthetic oil for cars when all multi-nationals laughed at them back in the 70s. A US veteran fighter pilot figured that if it was good for his jets why wouldn't it be great for cars. So with that dream and vision he started the company after returning from the war. This company (AMSOIL) is today eons ahead of the big guys in oil performance. Their oil formulations have been measured against all others and produced wear indexes half of the best super-syn oil in the market and as much as one quarter of the wear index of your average oil. In addition it evaporates half the rate the best oils in the market do after 6 months of use. That is the difference between having real protection in your engine crank-case or oil syrup (I have seen that first hand when replacing the top 1 oil at the shops that was used in the E320 for 8 months or 3000 miles prior to the last change I did. It was in quite a thick state even after warming up the engine). No wonder the regular dealers and oil changing companies recommend you to change oil every 3000 miles or 3 months for the regular cars. The problem with MB in the US is that the FSS system was set for a target of 10000 miles between service calls. Most people went by that and unfortunately since the majority of the oil used here is not as good as in Europe they ended up with broken engines very fast and then went and sued MB and won their case because they were not warned about the types of oil to use. So now MB is only recommending oil products that meet their latest and tighter specifications.

So with all that as a historical background, when I bought my 2 used 99 MB, I tried to find out more about this top of the line synthetic oil made by Amsoil after hearing about it from 2 friends that fly airplanes so many times at the office. Since I made a reasonable size investment on those cars I figured I better take better care of them than I would do for a regular car.

The web site where you can read more about this (plenty of technical data) and link directly to the manufacturer's web site to order oil and other products is:

http://synthetic-oil-tech.com/1265580

just click on the ONLINE STORE button and search for EUROPEAN .
You should get a list with 4 products with the european formulation. They are all the same but packaged in different sizes. Most MB (E and above) engine oil capacity is around 8.5 quarts of oil . The C class uses a bit less (6.5?). The retail price is a bit more than the "top" line of off the shelf synthethic oils, but then again the old saying that you get what you pay for applies also here. For those that decide to do the oil change for all of their cars and want to save some money I recommend signing up as a wholesale customer for 6 months at a low cost of $10 on that same site and during that time just purchase all the oil you need at the same price they sell to the direct distributors.

I also recommend you order their engine oil flush product, to be used before putting their oil so as to flush out all slush from previous oil used. It is quite simple. All instructions are on the web site and on the product label. They also have excellent products to clean the injectors and other parts of the carburation system.

I did notice even what fews a few more horse power from the E320 and noticed that the engine runs a lot smoother and revs up much quicker when demanded by the driver. I did not measure the mileage before and after for the E320, but will be doing that with the Aztek as it has a trip computer that displays the average mileage between resets.


When you use the AMSOIL oil for the first time you should use the oil flush product. In that case it is also recommended to do the oil draining using the plug in the bottom of the engine, but all future ones can be done by syphoning the oil using a vaccum syphon that goes into the dipstick tube. You can buy at boat stores and it is called Topsider. There are many other ones in the market, but this is one of the best. It costs 39 retail, but can be had for 29 sometimes on sale. It is cheap enough. So just get one and enjoy that care of your second or only lady depending on your situation. It is also a lot cleaner than getting under the car. Many dealers do it that way nowadays. You can try parking the car over a ramp so as to cause the oil to shift towards the dipstick side so as to drain the most oil you can. You can do a test, but many users of MB and BMW have found that if they take out the plug there is less than a cup of old oil left.
One detail about using the topsider or similar systems is that the oil needs to warm but not very hot as it tends to make the hoses too soft and they might clapse temporarily causing a slower drain rate.

For those that live in Texas for example who have to drive hundreds of miles daily for business or even to go shopping, it is easy to put 15 or even more than 20000 miles a year. In that case check-out the AMSOIL products that are guaranteed to protect your engine for 25,000 or 35,000 miles or 1 year on the product label (go find someone else that does that). It is called ATMTP and it costs only a bit more than the european formulation oil. Of course you would have to replace the oil filter at the intervals that the FSS recomends the oil service and would be better to use the new filter types using a fleece element instead of paper. You can still go ahead and plan to replace that oil at the 10000 mile intervals, but feel comfortable going over it if for some reason you are away from a service station or still thousands of miles away from a point/time you can afford to check her in for service or do it yourself again.
Common sense should be exercised by those that still have cars under warranty, as far as keeping the records up to date and doing the plan A or B when the indicator on the dash indicates it is time for service. notice that up to the 2004 model year, the routine service was included in the car price, but in 2005 it may have been discontinued for some. Once the warranty is over I normally get more aggressive with the way I maintain my cars. Meaning that I try to do the oil changes and other things myself , such as:
replace air filter by upgrading to K&L or AMSOIL filters that seem to do better in the long run, specially when replacing a regular paper filter,
replace wipers, bulbs,cabin air filter, . (it is quite involving to get them out of the glove compartment area) and I am almost sure that in one of my cars those filters were not replaced even though it had gone through a Plan A less than 12 months before I got to replace it myself.). By now you should be getting the flavor as to why I am trying to maintaim the routine things in my cars as much as I can. I think we the MB owners are fortunate to have a car that is well engineered . Things are usually pretty easy to replace , check or adjust, even though on the more complex ones we are still better off getting the specialized mechanics take care of (or at least try, as looking through these forums you can find answers for problems that the dealers have been kicking around the bush on your car and never fixed) . If they only read the service notes as well as most of us in these forums do there would be a lot less complaints about their quality.

Catelo

So are you guys changing the filters as well or just the oil, oh and where are you guys getting it done at? I ask because a buddy of mine took it to a few places, jiffy lube etc. and they said that they wouldnt change it because there was no dip stick. So are you guys doing it yourselves, or taking it to the dealer?

DWP

The FSS criteria may include service at least annually. When we reached the 11th month after delivery of our car the FSS started counting down the days to exactly 12 months from delivery. When the 365th day rolled around (or maybe the 366th, since 2004 had a 2/29) the FSS told us to get serviced, even though we were still under 10,000 miles at that point.

steph280

Just curious, what is a fair price dealer charge for these oil changes?

I think I saw a "special" at our dealer for $89 or something. I don't recall paying more than $50 for oil on my last MB. I would assume the synthetic oil would cost more. Just want to check with you guys first.

Thanks.

topspin4hand

I paid approx $110 at my dealer for an oil change and filter replacement at 6K miles.

guanabara

No dipstick? Run away from that place. The only tube without dipstick that I know is the one for the transmission oil. Unless this is one of the newer models. It may be a new way to get people stuck going to the dealer for the engine oil change. If that is the case, I am sure you can buy the dip stick at discount places such as :
http://www.alloemautoparts.com

In general though changing oil at oil places may entail getting cheap non-synthetic oil and you will pay dearly long run.
See info on AMSOIL above. It is the best on the market.

SAguirre

All the W211s have no dip stick. There is a dipstick tube and a cap. You can measure the oil from the MFD down to a tenth of a quart. I would not take my W211 to these quick oil change places since they usually don't even know how to reset the FSS computer.

Guanabara, most of the problem that MB had about using the FSS recommended oil intervals was just one: They had not specified that the FSS can only be carried out if you used 100% synthetic oil. All the engine damage was due to the use of organic oil and the use of the FSS. At no point, has MB Mobil One oil been inadequate.

Also, I have to disagree about your comments that US quality oil is different than European oil. I have lived in Europe for years and actually brought oil over from the US since it was so much cheaper. I ran my Porsche 930 on US bought oil at over 170 MPH and ran it through the ringer, I never had any problems.

I am not disputing the quality of AMSOIL, but I seriously disagree with you when you imply that Mobil 1 is inadequate. I find it hard to believe that both Porsche and Mercedes would endorse it if it was bad. As you can see on one of the sticky threads, I have my oil tested. When you test your oil, you eliminate all speculation on the interval length. I find that to be the best way to go.

I will probably stick with Mobil One at least until my car runs out of warranty, but even then, I don't think that changing the brand of oil would be a good idea anyway. If you always ran Mobil One, there is something to be said about keeping the same brand in the engine. Also, once the break-in debris is out of my oil, I fully intend to run one oil change for the full FSS recommendation, and then I will test it again and see what is going on. I know that it will be fine.

Steve

northbenz

My dealer's service dept. just told me that Mercedes is going back to the scheduled mileage maintenance system based on actual miles. At the same time he reported that as others have said above that with the new synthetic oils the intervals are closer to 10,000, or at least annually if lesser mileage in a 12 month period. It may be overkill, but when it comes time for resale, I'll bet the next buyer will be more than willing to pay the cost for those extra oil changes if you can assure him with maintenance records confirming you kept to a 5,000 mile maximum between oil changes. I know I would.

guanabara

Thanks Steve for your fair reply.
I was not trying to put down any oil brands on my original post.
I have used Mobil1 in my cars in the past too. In fact I still use it in my Pontiac. It is just that I found out that when I went to exchange the oil myself, after 7 months in the E320, I found it to be too thick or in another words it evaporated too much.
Then I kept hearing from friends about Amsoil and decided to try it out.
I did notice some difference in engine performance and fuel efficiency. That normally translates into less wear and tear, but the real test will be how it comes out 12 months after I put it in. A good test I do with my limited knowledge is to lift the stick and see if the oil flows down and a forms small drop. If the oil has lost its normal consistency by evaporation, etc ,it will stick to the tip of the measuring device and not flow down to form the drop.
Mind you that the color is not a factor to indicate if an oil is good or not.
When an oil evaporates and gets denser it looses some of its property to carry heat away from the engine and that is one of the important functions for the oil too as in some cases more than 50% of the heat transfer is done that way.

So if you stick to changing the oil each 6 months or no more than 3000/5000 miles as most people are asking or concerned about in this forum then Mobil 1 will do the job. As you said, the manufacturer would not "recommend" it.

I beleive the european manufacturers with long oil change intervals, after being burned out by people using cheap oil, are now recommending the oils with the minimum quality to be used in their cars. They are not saying not to use anything better if it exists or comes out in the market after they publish their articles. That's why they come out with performance specs. The latest one from Mercedes being 223.5.

For those who drive quite a lot and want to have the piece of mind of an oil brand that guarantees the oil performance on the label up to 25000 or 35000 or 1 year than there is only one brand in the US and for that matter in the world.
The only thing required would be to replace the oil filter each 6 months, preferrably with the new element type (fleece) that lasts longer.
Another option is the Amsoil european blend that is guaranteed for the FSS cycle period.


FYI, I did live in Italy for 2 years also and can tell you that some car brands such as Ferrari, etc have specific oil formulations made specially for their cars .They do not recommend using any other type of regular oil available off the shelf in stores or oil changing places. Not even Mobil 1.

When I take my cars for oil change, if the weather is bad, I take my own Mobil 1 or Amsoil bottles with me and then I ask them use them instead of the stuff they have in bulk of unknown origins or quality or storage shelf life. In general unless I can watch it, I avoid taking the car for oil change, since the oil filter replacement is easy but not a trivial thing for those guys that want to do things quickly. Invariably they will not replace all o-rings or do it wrong or do not put oil on the rings and then jam them in, so it is a bit risky and needs to be carefully watched.

Have you seen how some oils tend to foam real bad on long interval engines and gunk your engine all over? It does not happen with Amsoil or Mobil 1 so far, so that is a good thing. If you find some thick creamy substance on the oil inlet cover it is time to change your oil brand. I have seen mechanics dismantling the whole engine to remove the gunky substance accumulated and charging the poor owner lots of $$$$. If that is happening to you then a good oil flush product should be tried first before getting into aggressive actions like that.

What did sell me on AMSOIL was the 2 comparisons that follow:

http://www.synthetic-oil-tech.com/d...._vs_mobil1.htm

http://www.synthetic-oil-tech.com/d....il_testing.htm

And finally, I would like to bring up a good point that correlates to this.
My MB and most MB came with Continental tires from the factory. They still do nowadays. Does that mean:
1. They are the best tires?
2. They are the only tires I can use?

of course not, in fact I did change them to a much better tire (visibly better traction on all surfaces and lower noise levels. see BFGoodrich Traction TA tires) for about the same price the Continentals cost here in the US.

If there are better tires in the market, why is it that an expensive car such as MB is coming out with run of the mill quality tires? Can you really rely solely on the traction control systems? . Go to the tirerack.com web site and look at the performance of the tires you have in your car right now. Compare that with other tires (i.e. BFGoodrich traction TA) and see what I am saying.
Why do I bring tires to the picture here? well after almost spinning around on a wet highway access road with the original tires all of the BAS an whatever, I wouldn't put my life or the cars life on the line again just because a manufacturer uses or recommends a certain brand. We were given brains to think and analyse things on our own. Being an engineer that is one of the things I do best and I cannot let someone think for me.

Nice picture you had out there. Thanks for the comments.

http://www.synthetic-oil-tech.com/d....vidson_oil.htm

SAguirre

guanabara,

I guess I should mention that there is one thing that is bad about AMSOIL, it is not the easiest to buy since it has limited distribution. I have used AMSOIL in the past and I have had my order added to a shipment that was sent in the city I live in. That is the best way to go if it is possible. It was very hard to tell if I got an increase in the MPGs, but it could have made a slight difference.

The issues are, however, that my new MB has free scheduled maintenance and it will be Mobil One. So that is why I will stick with it. As the test results show, the TBN is what you need to go by when it comes to changing your oil. You want to change it once it nears 2.0. My oil was still at 4.5 after 5k miles. I think that it was still very important to change it at that time because of the particulates in the oil. I paid MB to change it before the scheduled time and I will go about 6k miles on this oil and test it again. I seriously doubt that it will be a problem to go between 8k and 11k miles on the oil. I say 11k miles because MB will still change your oil when it has 2,000 left on the FSS.

Also, MB strictly says to use 0 W 40 oil. I have not looked too hard, but I have not seen that grade oil from AMSOIL. I have purchased an extended warranty for my car and I plan to use what they recommend and far as both brand and weight.

So here is what is not taken into account about the MB oil cycle: If the typical car as about 5 quarts of oil in it (including the filter). MB has 8.5 quarts. This means that there is 40% more oil to do the same amount of lubrication. Not to mention, the filter element is of better quality than the average one and you are running synthetic oil. Just under this premise, it would be logical to think that 8.5 quarts of oil can run at least twice the 3k miles average of the organic oil. Now consider that you are running a synthetic oil that can outlast organic by well over twice the life and 13k miles does not sound too excessive (given a good filter).

This is why MB knows what they are talking about. The FSS is a great system, but it has unfortunately been changed to a fixed interval because US consumers simply don't understand it. In Europe, MB also used Mobil One and recommends a 20K miles interval on some of its commercial fleet vehicles. I personally am still getting used to that idea.

So once again guanabara, you have to consider that up to 2004, MB has free service that uses Mobil One. Also, it would be very inconvenient to force change the brand of oil and it would probably give MB a reason to void your warranty (like it or not) that is what they like to do. I feel as if Mobil One is good enough and definitely better than organic oil, so I will probably keep it. Especially since I use 0 W 40.

My Audi has 262,000 miles on the original engine. I have never opened it and it has never seen a drop of synthetic oil. The car has always used Castrol GTX 10 W 40. Since my cousin used that oil for the first 150,000 miles, I decided to keep what was in it since it could cause some problems if I changed to a brand that has different detergents in it. The Audi only takes 5 quarts (including the filter), and it has never exceeded 4,500 miles on its oil. The engine still runs very smoothly, and up until last month, it never burned oil. (It just started to burn 1 quart between oil changes ) So, this tells me that synthetic oil (8.5 quarts of it) will go at least 10K miles and still protect and lubricate the engine well.

I will retest my oil when it is due and post the results, which should eliminate the speculation anyway.

As far as your tire analogy, it makes some sense, but it is not totally parallel to the oil subject. A lot of MBs come with Michelin tires and my last MBs came with Pirelli and Fulda. Tires need to be different depending of many factors. But motor oil has almost become one size fits all. Compared to Organic oil, synthetic is miles better. So if MB and Porsche choose to strictly endorse the #2 or #3 ranked oil, that is still a great product and will do OK. A big part of the reason why Mobil One is endorsed is because you can go to Wal-Mart and buy Mobil One 0 W 40, AMSOIL is a obscure brand to the average consumer. Also, the extra degrees of protection that AMSOIL gives you compared to Mobil One would be almost impossible to really use. By the time you reach the extremes on the charts, your engine is fried anyway.

Steve