bkushner

Since 1998 every Mercedes I've owned, when getting the service Mobil One Oil is put into the engine. Today I had my 60,000 on my 2014 GLK250 Diesel and I noticed it was Mercedes Benz Oil 5w30 put in.

Anyone know what's up with that? Are they switching?

formerjeepguy

Mobil stopped making the MB diesel spec oil in the 5w30 weight - their replacement is 0w30.

I wonder who makes the MB oil.

bkushner

The MB Oil Part number comes up 5W30 Oil..

bkushner

Just got this from the service manager

Good afternoon.

Mercedes Benz now supplies their own brand of synthetic oil.

Regards.

Mark Bauers
Service Manager
Mercedes Benz of Cherry Hill

Diabolis

Now that MB has received massive financial influx as a result of their F1 team partnership with Petronas, Petronas has an agreement to be the exclusive MB "petroleum products" sponsor and thus MB can no longer officially use or sell Mobil 1 oil. The kicker is that while Petronas is a large oil company, they unfortunately don't have much knowledge when it comes to making good lubricants (nowhere near what Exxon Mobil knows about them), and seeing as MB (1) now can't sell Mobil 1 for contractual reasons and (2) knows that Petronas oils are not quite up there in terms of quality so they don't just want to use and endorse Petronas oil in their street vehicles, they get a third party - a well-respected oil manufacturer that they may or may not have endorsed in the past - to package and "white-label" their oil as Mercedes-Benz.

This is confidential inside information from someone working in the synthetic lubricant industry and thus presumably credible, but I certainly have no first-hand knowledge of it, and for the record, I have certainly never been told of this directly or indirectly by anyone, and most certianly not by any of my engineering colleagues who are either currently or have in the past been employed by any number of companies in the petroleum and/or lubricant industry. In other words, I read it somewhere on the Internet - no one has told me anything that they possibly shouldn't have.

P.S. There was a VOA done recently by someone on the C63 forum on the MB 5W40 oil, and it came back from Blackstone labs (or whatever lab they used) looking very much like another off-the-shelf product.

Diabolis

Actually, that's not true. Mobil still makes the M1 ESP in both 0W30 and 5W30 grades (the latter is what I use in my GLK 250).

See https://mobiloil.com/en/motor-oils/mobil-1/mobil-1-esp.

107123210

That is the Mobil US site. They also list ESP 5W-40.

In Canada, things are a little different (No ESP 5W-40, but they do list 0W-40 and M 5W-40)

http://www.mobil.ca/Canada-English-L...s_mobil-1.aspx

My GLK250 gets whatever MB dealers are currently using! MB 5W-40 at last service (Dec 2014)

Gerry_M

My MB dealer still uses Mobil1

Diabolis

The person asking the question appears to live in the US, so the reference I listed points to the US Mobil 1 site.

In Canada we only get the 0W30 and 5W30 - and seeeing as there is no M1 ESP 5W40 (there used to be in the US but it has long been discontinued), if your dealer put in 5W40 in your diesel GLK I would take it up with them ASAP as a non-ESP oil will definitley damage the exhaust after-treatment system and DPFs, plus it's not the right viscosity to boot (especially in Canada).

107123210

I realized that OP was in USA. My point was that the US Mobil site you linked to says that they DO have ESP 5W40 in USA. Nothing about it being discontunued. The Canadian site only shows 0W-30 and 5W-30.

From US site:
Mobil 1 ESP Formula M 5W-40 has the following builder approvals:
MB-Approval 229.51
MB-Approval 229.31

Diabolis

There was a recent and quite informative discussion on this topic on one of the Sprinter forums:

http://sprinter-source.com/forum/showthread.php?t=37314

Essentially - the facts are that (1) the ESP Formula M 5W40 was a specific formulation for MB and thus met MB BeVo 229.31 & 229.51 specs ONLY (there's was no ACEA or for that matter any other builder approval); (2) Mobil 1 is no longer the "official" MB oil supplier due to the marketing agreement with Petronas, so there is no market for the ESP Formula M 5W40, and (3) last but certainly not least, because of the required increase in the oil's anti-oxidation characteristics imposed by the (reprehensibly) mandated high biodiesel content in the fuel sold in the US and better fuel economy, it is no longer being manufactured and is instead being replaced by the BeVo 229.52 spec X1 0W30. Whatever stockpiles remain will be used up and that will be it.

Without spilling the beans I can state that VOA on the MB-branded ESP 5W30 looks identical to that of the M1 ESP 5W30, so you can draw your own inferences about who may or may not make the MB-branded oils. There isn't (and won't - can't - be) a single BeVo 229.52 5W40 oil because of fuel efficiency requirements, which I suspect will soon be the only ESP oil found on MB dealer's shelves seeing as the new OM642 engines require BeVo 229.52 oils, which are now also approved for use in all other non-commercial MB diesel engines like the OM651 in the GLK 250.

mjhawkins2346

Well it seems you are correct. The Diesel seems to spec the Mobil 1 5-30 or 0-30 oil
https://bevo.mercedes-benz.com/bevol...229.52_en.html

I have a gasser 350 and the 229.51 specs still approve the Mobil 1 0-40 ESP I have happily used for years. It seems to be confusion we didn't need.

107123210

At last service (Dec 2014) dealer filled with "MB 5W-40 Full Synthetic". Interested to ask them what they would now use. If it is 0W-30 maybe my fuel consumption will decrease!

Maybe not . ESP 0W-30 has only slightly lower viscosity at 100C than ESP 5W-40 (12.2 vs 13.5 cStks). Mobil Advanced Economy 0W-30 interestingly has lower viscosity than ESP 0W-30 (10.9 vs 12.2). All at 100C or close to operating temperature.

Oh well, GLK250 will get whatever dealer puts in.

mjhawkins2346

I would have a chat with the dealer. The 5-40 is not spec'd for the OM651 engine. If your engine develops troubles down the line you might find your dealer suffering from amnesia. There are 2 grades of oil on the list: 5-30 and 0-30 and the oils that are acceptable are detailed out very specifically.
http://bevo.mercedes-benz.com/bevoli...2&suchbegriff=
If it was my car I would insist they put a 229.52 oil in now and take the other oil out. Print out the Bevo list and ask them to explain. I suspect they were out of the correct oil and decided they didn't care that much after all - and they wanted you out. This is what gives dealers a bad name.