Oil Usage - E Class

[Dr Claire]

My 18 month old E270CDi estate uses 1 litre of oil every 900 miles. The car has done 13K miles. MB tell me that the spec is 1 litre per 1000KM which seems like a lot of oil. The car smokes on cold start and they tell me that I do not pre-warm the glow plugs (It makes no difference whether I do or do not). I have no technical knowledge and feel I am being bamboozled by the technicians. Please help

 

[mlc]

Is it within spec - I think so. Is it acceptable - of course not.

At the limit of 1 ltr per 1000 km you are close to a litre of oil per tank of diesel. It also mean that you are using around two oil changes worth of oil between each service. The limit reflects the worst case, which I think is high speed running in very hot climates, and add in mountain climbing as well - hardly the UK in April.

What should you do? Well at 18 months you are still well within warranty, so you could wait for it to get worse, but I would recommend talking to MB UK directly with an agrument along the lines of they can spend some money now or a lot more money later.

Mark.

 

[Dr Claire]

Thanks Mark - its what I expected, However it is MB at Milton Keynes who told me - Steven Cowell their senior resolutions manager. I would welcome more feedback please. Where is the oil going - its not leaking- and what is the solution?

 

[jberks]

Don't 270's have a known problem with the turbos? Perhaps this is the reason.

I would doubt that pre-warming would make much difference though its probably good practice. I understand the glow plus are there primarily for eco reasons these days - as you say, you don't need them to start the car anymore.

I would certainly push it a little with both MB and your dealer. As above, irrespective of 'allowances' most 270's don't use that much.

You don't say whether it's always been this way or has it changed recently?

 

[Dr Claire]

We bought it in October last year as a ex-demo. It has always used this much oil but we were told the engine was bedding in and it would soon stop using oil. We are just off to France this weekend and will monitor its usage over the period. I suspect oil usage is increasing. Thanks for all your help. Claire

 

[jules335500]

I think we all agree tht some engines use more oil than others but tht seems way too high.Sounds like a leak of some sort or turbo problems.......seals normally.
Am not sure on those cars but do they have a oil cooler ...........if so get it checked out.
Would hassle mb dealer until problem resolve as it for sure will just get worse.
Take it u r using the correct type of oil for the car?

 

[robbo]

I wonder if the piston rings havent bedded in properly. Has the car been driven very gently since new? One of the cures for this I believe is to give the engine a damn good thrashing with plenty of full throttle driving.

 

[jules335500]

Went tp party at w/e as was talking to a mate who is a diesel engineer for lotus cars.............they have had problems with vauxhall diesels using 1lt of oil per 1000miles.vauxhall have checked it out and have said its within thier parameters for diesel engines.

 

[MW]

This is very high. It may be it was not bedded in right, But I can't see it getting better. Any 18 month old car must have been run in enough. I would register concern at MB HQ, and get the dealer to seriously look into it. It must be costing a fortune in oil. My old 1992 230E with 116K uses about half a litre over 6000 miles and its over 12 years old. The Co2 is even now less than 1%.
Burning this much oil must be effecting the pollution figure for the exhaust. Might be worth doing an exhaust gas test.

 

[OlafMaxwell]

I can only speak for an E320 CDI. I go 10k between oil changes and at 94k have never had to top up the oil between services. The loss of oil over the 10k never comes anywhere near even a litre and stays within the limits. At your consumption rate for 20k miles a year I would be putting in a litre every 7-800 miles or 25 litres per annum, a litre every two weeks..... or burning 3 litres on a trip to France. That level of oil consumption is certainly not acceptable. It's a litre of oil for virtually every tank of diesel.

I don't believe you would pass EC exhaust pollution limits and it might be an idea if you could get an exhaust gas test done because you might be able to get them under that heading. The car is sold with certain design levels of exhaust pollution and they can only exceed that by a fairly narrow margin, irrespective of whether the engine is burning oil or not. You need to really dig in hard, I have found MB exceedingly difficult to deal with and worse than any other manufacturer. I cannot comment on the man in Milton Keynes but here in Ireland I found MB warranty department totally unaware of their legal obligations and clueless about consumer law.

Out of curiosity are you using the recommended synthetic oil?

The other thing is there is or was a well known problem with the turbo on the 270CDI and a lot of people I know had the turbo replaced very quickly. The glow plugs won't affect that, they are only for aiding starting the engine in cold weather but they dont affect the turbo in any way.

 

[OlafMaxwell]

13k in 18 months is low mileage and does not even seem to justify a diesel purchase. Unless you do a very large percentage of very short journeys [under 2 miles] where engine has not a chance to warm up. This still would not account for the level of oil consumption but at the same time may result in a tendency to use more.

 

[OlafMaxwell]

13k in 18 months is low mileage and does not even seem to justify a diesel purchase but of course the diesel does seem so much nicer to drive.....

Do you do a very large percentage of very short journeys [under 2 miles] where the engine has not a chance to warm up? is still would not account for the level of oil consumption but at the same time may result in a tendency to use more. I have taken the car down through France and Spain in 38-40c temperatures fully laden and while the temperature gauge will always rise I still have never experienced oil consumption. The Peugeot 405 has also done similar drives without consuming oil.

I got out the EC Certificate of Conformity that comes with every new car sold in the EC, you should have one too with your documents, personal to your car and quoting your VIN [Vehicle Identification Number].

It gives specific design emission levels for E320CDI at certification date of 12.11.1999 of
CO 0.307 g/km
HC + NOx 0.397 g/km
Particles 0.036 g/km

Those for the 270 will differ and also should be significantly lower due to more recent technology.

If you have yours you should find those readings and get them checked independently if the dealer is unhelpful.

 

[faz]

I have a 1997 E300 TD 115K miles and this does about 2000 miles a month on motorways. The oil consumption is about 500ml per 2000 miles

 

[morris]

Oil Consumption

Just bought a brand new SLK 350 UK specs from Germany. in 3.5 months I done 2K miles and consumed 2.5 L of oil. was told by MB staff this is normal but I have never experienced anything like this consumption in any merc or non merc car before. It seems that my problem is the same as Dr. Claire the question here is how to complaint and to whom.

 

[robbo]

The rings havent bedded in most likely. Thrash the hell out of it for a while and I suspect the consumtion will most likely drop back to normal when the rings bed in.

 

[Keith]

Dr claire
your oil usage is way too high. My 10 year old 300D uses 0.5 liters every 9000 miles at the most. Get MB to sort it out.

Keith

 

[jberks]

I go through a couple of litres over a 10-14k period which is a good thing really as it keeps my service intervals nice and wide. (Assyst gives me another 1500+ miles, per litre added). I've only had an 'add oil' warning once and that was a week off the service, I added a couple of litres to be safe and then had to cancel the booking and rearrange for 6 weeks later!

So generally I don't NEED to add any, but choose to as I believe it actually saves me money by increasing the time between service visits.

 

[JimMac]

Oil Consumption

Hello,

No magic wand for this I am afraid. Turbo replacement may help but it will come down to your relationship with the dealer and how insistant you can be with MB directly. anything over 0.5% oil consumption is unacceptable to most manufacturers of diesel engines but modern engines have seen increases in oil consumption. This is linked to the high quality of oils and as per previous replies, a damn good thrashing sometimes helps. Years ago the engine "bedded in" because the oil wasn't able to stop it doing just that, but new oils are clever and too good for that initial period. Heavy diesel manufacturers now fill engines with basic oil (CD spec) for the running in period to sort this issue. The issue is then reversed as the vehicle is put to proper use where the basic spec oils can't stand the heat and burn so you need a really high spec oil to stand combustion temperatures etc seen in these modern engines.

In my previous job, I struggled to get plant customers to accept that their new machine would use engine oil even though their antique digger in the corner never used a drop. You need to get your case together by measuring how many litres of oil compared to litres of fuel, this is far more meaningful to engineers than litres per mile as you may get a high or low mpg compared to the next driver. To do this, top up the oil to the maximum mark and fill the fuel tank (step 1). Continue to record fuel added after this intial fill and also record when you next have to top up the engine oil. divide the oil volume added by fuel volume (total number of litres since step 1) and multiply by 100 this will give you the oil consumption by percentage. If it is over 0.5% MB should be suitably embarrased. My only additional worry is that too fix the issue, a turbo replacement may help, but you will probably end up having them strip and rebuild your engine (with new parts) which will probably shorten its life rather than extend it as even the most prestine workshop won't come close to the standards maintained where the engine was intially put together.

Regards,

 

[RichardM]

Hi,

I've done nearly 50,000 miles in my E270CDi now and I've only added oil once. At about 10,000 miles I had a message to add 1 litre of oil which I did, and I've haven't had to add any oil in between services since. I have had a Faulty Turbo which has been replaced but this didn't make any difference to the oil consumption.