I see, I guess the happy medium is 5000 miles I will stick with that, or try 3000 miles that forum member JettaRed suggested.

 

I again follow MB's recommendation - oil is changed every 12 months (that's about 3,500 miles).

 

I see, since you are under miles and oil expires or at least go bad in a year (from what I heard), changing it based on time interval makes sense.

 

Did you know it was a gravel truck? Sometimes the first indication is a piece of gravel hitting your windshield.

 

I'm not sure oil goes bad in a year (I certainly hope NOT), but it does have a shelf life.

The video, however, talks about new, unused, unopened oil; not stuff in your engine.

 

Mhmm what I mean was the engine oil already used and inside the engine. That said, there might be a reason that all manufacturers recommend a mileage interval and maximum once every year whichever comes first, I sure hope it wasn't because they want to increase service frequency.

 

5 to8 years:

https://www.google.com/search?q=what...hrome&ie=UTF-8

 

Yep, I agree. Once you start using oil its service life decreases, especially with turbo cars which are virtually all engines made today.

 

Thank you both for the info.

 

The shelf life of engine oil might be 5 to 8 years but once the oil is inside the engine, its life span will be much shorter due to atmospheric conditions, condensation and contaminates. With that said, I had 2.5 year old unused oil pulled from a garaged car and had it lab tested fine.

 

Woah, so transmission service is at 5 years. My car is coming up in 40k miles and 6 years in December and my Service rep told me that I didn't need to do the transmission fluid change until my service next April. Will I be behind then?

 

Infiniti may be different. I was referring to Mercedes 722.9 7G+.

 

True, and I am sure stop and go traffic or short distances especially driving to the point of not allowing the engine ever reaching operating temperatures will further degrade the oil.

 

I also wonder if ethanol will affect it too, as it is very difficult to find pure gas anymore (at least here in Canada).

 

The reason only short trips are bad is because the oil does not get hot enough to evaporate any water condensation, so the water mixes with the oil. It's not much, but it's still there. Arguably, the oil temp needs to reach 212°F (100°C) to "burn off" some of that water.

 

Makes sense, but operating temperatures in our engines are 70c (158f) right and temperatures hover at around 96c (205f) when just driving normally, does that mean you kind of have to drive hard once in a while to burn that water off?

 

I don't know. I too rarely hit 212°F, but am often at 207°F - 209°F.

As we know, the oil temperature is a calculated/derived value and not a measured value. So, I'm going to assume normal operating temperature is sufficient. I hit the minimal operation temp of 176°F (80°C) within 4-5 miles or 6-8 minutes, depending on the ambient temp. That's pretty much the same for my turbo and non-turbo engines.

The point being that a lot of short duration trips don't allow for the elimination of contaminants as much as some longer trips. So, be sure to exercise your car often.

 

I see, for my car the engine oil temperature turns white from blue when it is at 70c I am not sure the reason why it is lower compared to your SL.

 

That's interesting. Even my Operator's Manual agrees with you. Now you have me thinking I'm losing my mind. I will double-check the next time I go for a drive.

 

I see, all good!

I understand you like to simply cruise around and not intended to push the car most of the time, which I mean makes sense since it is an SL a very nice comfortable cruiser. In that case, it doesn't matter what is the normal operating temperature at.

 

I do push the car from time to time. I do have a Stage 2 tune and not for nuthin. However, in consideration of my main passenger, I tend to be gentle. (Happy wife, happy life.) But, when there's no passenger, then that is a different story.

The other deterrent is I never need to be pulled over. When you carry a certain instrument of self-defense, interactions with the police could get complicated. Therefore, I try to behave so that does not happen.

 

Right, I forgot the SL had stage 2, now that you mentioned it you did mention after unplugging the oil pump solenoid that tune isn't jerky anymore, so yes you did mention this before I just forgot.

 

Engineering Explained did a plug for a new M1 oil for hybrids on youtube recently and explained this in the context of hybrid cars not running the engine hot enough for sufficient durations. At low operating temperatures, the water and the oil emulsifies. That would be pretty ugly.

 

Couple schools of thought here; Water temp get up to temp in about 15 minutes of driving, another 10 minutes for the oil to warm up and then another 15 to 30 minutes to burn off the water in the oil. Some people seem to think the process is much quicker, water temp get up to temp, the engine is now hot, the oil splashing against the hot engine will evaporate the water, this would mean a total of about 30 minutes to burn off the water as opposed to about an hour of driving. I do mostly short distance driving post pandemic. My average trip is about 5 miles, and I change my oil every 12 months. The last lab test I did right before one of my oil change, the oil tested fine which leads me to believe the shorter cycle theory seem to be more valid. As much as I like to take my car out for an Italian tune up once a while, I just do not think the need is valid, at least not from a water in oil scenario.

 

Are you located in a cold place? I checked my oil temps yesterday when I read this thread. After sitting overnight, it took less than 10 minutes of 30 mph driving to reach 220°F. As soon as I stopped at a traffic light the oil temperature settled on 205°F then increased when I started moving again. Ambient temperature was in the mid 80's.