New 2005 C240 owner!

The on-board service indicator for Service A and Service B...shouldn't it count down? In other words, currently it is indicating Service A in 13000 miles. However, if the car has accrued, say, 3005 miles, I'd think the indicator would say "Service A in 9995 miles."

Read through the manual (several times) and cannot find the answer. A brochure that came with the vehicle papers shows a picture of a countdown, but I am unable to locate such a screen on my C240.

Any ideas?

Thanks!

 

Yep.

Your car uses fixed service intervals -13k or 1 year, whichever comes first. So the service indicator doesn't "count down" the way it does with my car [an '02 with the FSS]. I'm guessing the display on a new car like yours will read 13k until one of two things happens: you either get it within 1000 miles of the service, or 11 months - then I expect the wording will change to reflect the upcoming service. ["Service due in xxx miles" or "Service due in 26 days" or words to that effect.]

I'm also guessing that when you have it serviced, when the tech resets the system, it will start again by adding 13 k miles to whatever the odo reading was when it was reset. Example: if the oil is changed at 11,592 miles, the display when reset will show the next service as 24,592....and so on for the life of the car.

On our car, the FSS indeed decrements as miles are accumulated, but not on a one-to-one basis. When the car is used with "easy miles" [long trips, no cold starts, etc.] the odo may go 2 miles for every 1 mile decremented, with up to 20 k or 2 years between oil changes. So the schedule on the new cars like yours is VERY, VERY conservative.

Everyone in the US is hung up on short oil changes, including a lot of so-called "professionals" whose experience is decades old. MB did a study a couple of years back on E-class cars that had lab oil analyses done on samples of oil in the crankcase. Cars that had the FSS calling for an oil change at about 20,000 miles [yes, 20k miles] actually did not show significant oil degradation until 42,500 miles [this on synthetic oil, of course, which is all you should be putting in to any MB]. This is a byproduct of the new emissions rules - these cleaner running engines are not dumping a lot of crap back into the crankcase as they age. Fewer air pollutants also translate to fewer pollutants in the oil. Also, these cars have a huge crankcase for their size - 8 quarts of oil for a 2.6 liter engine.

If you want to check my "guesses" to your question, check with a service advisor or call MBUSA, but I'm pretty sure the answer above is correct.