Been being a little more hard on the car lately, revving it a bit more and just having some fun. Really enjoying the handling in the twistys, nice to have turns, in Florida it was mostly straight out flat. Anyhow, driving along the highway today I hit the service indicator and oil level. To my amazement it said Add 2 Quarts. Strange because I got no message on the display panel prior to going into the service menu. My suggestion to everyone is check it there occasionally, Glad I did. The car now has 7500 miles on it and is 2500 away from the 10K service A. When I pulled the car in my garage I had a couple of quarts of Mobil 1 on the shelf and added both quarts. Started the car up and rechecked the level. Still saying add two quarts. Turned it off and restarted and checked again, still add two quarts.

I had to go out in my Truck for a while so left the car. Came back home around 10 tonight and started the car and ran it and hit the button again and still add 2 quarts showing. I'm thinking at this point, it's gotta go to the dealer, maybe by me adding the 2 quarts it is now overfilled two quarts as when I was in Florida the gauge seemed to be staying in the middle pretty well, just within the last 2000 miles this has happened. The car had run about 5 minutes idling and low and behold when I popped back up the oil level gauge it is now reading just a shade below max. and green all the way up to there.

Moral of the story, the gauge only updates at certain intervals and if you were to get over anxious and add a couple more quarts while it was still saying Add 2 quarts I woulda been overfilled 2 quarts then. Although I'd have to have been pretty stupid to put in a total of 4 quarts when it was only saying down 2 quarts to start with. Long winded post but just beware the oil gauge does take time of the engine on to update but does seem pretty accurate at least in my car.

I can imagine benz must have reliability tested this setup pretty well as you really need to count on this gauge. The only thing that gets me is I wish it woulda alerted me on the dash before I physically checked the gauge that the car was down 2 quarts, strange it did not. I'm wondering now how many quarts the car has to be down before a message does pop up on the dash? I should be good now though for the next 2500 miles until the first oil change at 10K miles in a couple of months.

 

 

Proper procedure with an electronic measurement is pretty critical. With my porsche, I'm pretty sure the manual states the engine should be off / cool and the car on a level surface. I imagine if the system is designed to be measured in that state, measuring oil with the engine running or right after having been run could give significantly different answers.

Also, if you add oil, probably good to cycle the engine and drive around before rechecking through the diagnostic tool.

Isn't there a distinct set of instructions to measure the oil in these cars? I looked at the manual online but it just says use the dip stick (which obviously doesn't wok here). Seems bizarre that MB didn't provide information on this.

 

 

I pretty sure it's like the BMW in that it should be operating temp and running and on a level surface. To be safe I'd let it idle 5 or 10 minutes. I'd say in doing it this way you'll come up with pretty consistent readings from what I've seen. At least with my car based on being down 2 quarts in 7500 miles or so I'd say oil use of a quart every 3000 miles is not unreasonable. So even if the oil had not been checked at all for the 10K miles it might be down around 3 quarts and being that the engine holds nearly 9 would not have been the end of the world. Today I noticed after adding the 2 quarts it said it wanted yesterday I was getting a reduce oil reading when I checked it at the market parking lot and then when I got the car home in the garage no more reduce oil message it is just up to the max mark on the green graph. So it's fairly touchy when it's on either end of the spectrum whether it be to add oil or reduce oil. But yes, Benz should have better documentation on all this just as with the intercooler shields, that issue should have been addressed more rather than simply adding them to the newer builds and not telling the people without the shields who are driving around risking intercooler damage. They are gonna be mighty pissed when they find out Benz knew about all this and they need to spend $2500.00 to replace an intercooler.

 

 

Glad you got it solved. I plan on always just checking it in my garage with it idling I know the garage is level and the being level is the key, anything off and you will get inaccurate reading just like with a dipstick. I use to own a quick lube and had people come back sometimes who'd checked their oil on unlevel ground and blamed us for underfilling or overfilling and then were shocked to see it was right on the full line when I checked it. Of course nobody ever apologized lol

 

I'm pretty sure now the proper way to check the oil is to have the ignition in the first click with the car off and the oil gauge on from the service menu and then click the start button one more time without pushing the brake to the ignition on position and it will come on the oil gauge screen for a few seconds saying "Measuring oil level" then it will come up with a reading. I'm pretty sure the oil should be hot doing this, although I'll try it tomorrow AM with the oil cold and see if I come up with the same reading which right now is right on the Max line as I added oil the other day because it said it was low.

 

Curious, why the confidence in this particular method? Also, if it's supposed to be when the engine is off, would seem more logical to me that you'd get a more consistent reading when the engine/oil is cold. If then engine has been running recently there'd be an inconsistent amount in wherever the oil gets pooled+measured (in my mind some of the oil is still in the other area of the system until things have had time to cool and settle). I would think it's either engine off + cold, or engine on + operational temp.