Serious Oil Change

[Gonzo42]

Back in the 60's, I used to be able to buy reclaimed oil at my local market.

Since it was so cheap, I did the following: drain the old oil and fill up with the reclaimed oil. Then I drove for about 1/2 hour until the engine reached full operating temperature. At that point I changed the filter, drained the reclaimed oil, then filled with fresh new oil.

IMHO, my engines lasted a long time. Now I have my first diesel, made by M-B and they have a very restricted list of approved oils. In addition to that, I noticed that the fresh oil turned black in only about 5 minutes after changing the oil.

So I ask whether doing the above procedure would provide any benefit or is it just a waste of time and money?

[ktmrfs]

my experience.

follow the mfg recomended change interval, send a sample off to Blackstone labs for a analysis including TBN and look at the results to see the results.

On 4 vehicles my experience is that the mfg recomended change intervals of 7500-10K miles are VERY conservative for my driving. That includes heavy towing with my two duramax trucks, lots of stop and go city driving on my mercedes sedan and only 8K or so miles/year, and low miles/year on an SL roadster.

One of my duramax trucks now has 180K on it and it uses less than a quart of oil in 10K miles. The mercedes sedan has 170K and uses maybe a pint in 8K.

So, after all this, I just go by what the mfg recomends. Oils and engines have come a long way since the 60's. With fuel injection and computer control virtually no fuel dilution, with modern mfg processes and block material, much better control on rings and seating so virtually no blow by, and modern metalurgy almost no wear, add to that modern oils, and mfg recomendations are conservative.

BTW if you think U.S. vehicle change intervals are long, look at the change interval on the same vehicles sold in Europe. Often the change interval is double or more.

[WILDEBILL308]

Why not do as it states in your owners manual on about page 156.
The MB Specifications for Service Products apply to your vehicle1 R228.51 R229.51 These engine oils are of high quality and have a beneficial effect.
The on-board computer automatically shows the date for the next oil change as an event message in the display.
Heare are 2 that meet those requierments.
Rotella T-6 5-40 meets MB228.31
Mobil 1 ESP Formula M 5W-40
Don't worey about the oil geting black. If you have concerns do a oil analisis.
If you don't use the aproved oils you will be replacing the particulaat filter.
Bill

[road-runner]

Oil is cheap? Depends on how you look at it. For a Sprinter, 14 quarts at $7 to $9 per quart comes out $100 or more for the oil. On the other hand, not using the proper spec oil can lead to a plugged DPF, and compared to replacing that, the oil is VERY cheap.

[maillemaker]

Basically it sounds like you were trying to flush out your engine's oil system with partially-filtered used oil.

I would doubt there was much benefit to this. If you regularly change the oil and filter that should be sufficient.

As westend said, if you really want clean oil then adding auxiliary filters to your system might be the way to go.

Steve

[RJsfishin]

When I worked at a GM dealership yrs ago, we had what was labeled as "used car oil",....was nothing but used drain oil that had set in a 50 gal drum for 1 year. There was no cleaner oil,....looked like brand new, and was the only oil used in all used car oil changes and adding.

Having said that, for my gas rigs, I still change oil when it starts getting dirty,.....usually 5-7K miles

[time2roll]

Forget your procedure from the 1960s and follow the book.
Yes oil turning immediately black in a diesel is normal and does not present a concern.
If you must know the condition... send a sample to blackstone-labs.com for analysis.

[westend]

Your past oil changing procedure does nothing for engine longevity, no matter what the experience was. Your attention to the maintenance schedule was probably the defining factor of engine longevity.

I'd suggest to use what the Mfg lists as compatible engine oil. My experience is that shortening maintenance intervals during the first 50K miles of ownership can add to vehicle longevity. Diesel engine motor oil contains a lot of surfactant. This is to lift contaminants from wear surfaces and will expose itself by oil that turns black, quickly. Nothing wrong with that.

If you really want clean oil, look into an after market, auxiliary oil filter that will help with capturing contaminants.

[rhagfo]

valhalla360 wrote:
When you drain the oil, there is always a little left on the surfaces. With a diesel, it turns black due to soot. You just mixed the new oil with the old sooty oil. You just can't visually see that the soot is drastically thinned out.

As far as helping reliability, your average new engine will outlast the chassis just following the manufacturers maintenance plan, so there is nothing to gain by putting suspect used oil into the engine.

X2 to the soot issue with a diesel, same with my 2001 Cummins with 303K miles. Since I bought it seven years ago I have been doing 10K oil changes. Just needed to replace the tappet cover gasket at 300K and this what it looked like when I removed the cover!

[Hondavalk]

I use to read every article l could find on oils and engine longevity until I followed a long 6 mouth magazine series on oils. The whole time I time I was expecting them to decree some definitive " This is the best thing to do ", conclusion. What it came down to is while one oil might be a little better for one application and another might be a little better under different conditions, all in all it stated that," A modern day engine failure due to oil failure is extremely rare". I quit reading oil articles after that.

[Lynnmor]

naturist wrote:
Modern engines bear little resemblance to engines of even 20 years ago. Oils today bear little resemblance to oils of even 20 years ago. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EXPECT TECHNIQUES THAT WORKED *THEN* TO BE HELPFUL TODAY!!!

Blackstone ran tests on vintage oils. Their conclusion was:

So that’s the end of our series. A lot of thought goes into making oil, and that’s been the case for many decades now. We’ve poked some fun at the way oil companies sell their products, but heck, they’ve got to say something. We stand by our statement that “oil is oil” and in the end, it doesn’t make a lot of difference what you decide to use. Through all the years and all the permuta-tions and configurations of oil and oil additives, the crude (and now, synthetic) stuff has kept cars running since Henry Ford did his thing more than 100 years ago. Buy what suits your vehicle and your wallet -- not what anyone else says you should use!


Part 2

Part 3

[naturist]

Modern engines bear little resemblance to engines of even 20 years ago. Oils today bear little resemblance to oils of even 20 years ago. DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCES EXPECT TECHNIQUES THAT WORKED *THEN* TO BE HELPFUL TODAY!!!

Diesel oils are required to be able to hold soot in suspension so that it does not form deposits in places you don't want deposits to form. The soot particles are so tiny that they have no effect on the ability of the oil to lubricate things as it should, indeed too small to be filtered out. But man, is that soot black. It is so black that only tiny amounts of it will turn the oil visibly black in a heartbeat. SO DON'T BE CONCERNED THAT YOUR OIL IS BLACK. In fact, if it wasn't black, THEN you should be concerned because the soot is accumulating somewhere and you are soon to need expensive repairs.

[wa8yxm]

I have heard of taking a bucket of old oil, setting it on a block, take an empty bucket and set beside it and a length of rope from the bottom (inside) of bucket 1 to just inside bucket 2 (near the top) so the wick action sucks the oil out of the "old" bucket and drips only clean oil into the "Clean" bucket.

That said.
Today's oil is not just dead dinosaurs. there are additives and anti-acids and viscosity improvers and so on and I'd not want to use oil that had not been properly re-processed by a proper reprocessing facility. these chemicals 'Wear out" unlike the actual oil itself.

[midnightsadie]

I have a MB diesel, book says change 10k I change at 8K and my dealer uses mobil 1 sny O 40 you should too .save couple bucks and do it yourself.

[MEXICOWANDERER]

My NTC Cummins has a Luberfiner and oil stays clear for 6K miles

[accsys]

The oil change interval is much longer on a diesel. Our CAT is 11,000 miles or annually. You View may be different since it is a smaller engine. Just do what the engine MFG says. We normally don't drive that many miles in a year so it's done annually. Our new oil turns black instantly but no problem. We use Rotella 15W-40 like most, 19 quarts of it.