Big surprise! The driver of a million mile car changes his oil often. Go figure.

Thanks for the post Alfredo!


A few posts before Alfredos was a post in which it was said that all their oil is recycled. That is an interesting point that has never or has rarely made it into any of our oil threads. I too pour my used oil in the empty one gallon jugs that the new oil came out of and take it to Wal Mart where they pour it into a tank that supposedly gets recycled. It's the responsible thing to do.

In the fifties we poured or drained it on the ground because we didn't know any better. I will NEVER do that again.

Have a great day,

Well, I went a bit further than that... Someone pointed to the wisdom of perfoming a few "Italian tune-ups..." so four or five days ago I took the car for a 25-mile tour-de-force... The following day for a 50-mile one, pushing the car to the limit (with pedal floored most of the time...)

Guess what? First of all, I was plainly flabbergasted by the power this beast is capable of... It really responds magnificently when you push it like that. And, secondly, it has solved (permanently, I think) the oil leak problem I was experiencing at where the breather elbow attaches to the valve cover, which had been going on for years. I still have some blowby, but the idle speed - which was previously very fast - has been normalized a bit after the "tune-ups." The only negative, I got some fuel leak at the base of one injector during each IT. The car now performs so much better... I have to say this all thing seems nothing short of miraculous....

Yeah, sure... But the important question, the $64,000 question is:

did he also change the oil filter each and every time?

Rino

P.S. Just joking, of course... :laugh2: As of me, I switched from changing it once every 6-7 months to every 3K mi/3 months, and a new oil filter goes in each and every time...

What speed did you obtain? If you have a tach, let us know RPM. I do a 70 mile round trip five days a week at 3100-3300 RPM, 70MPH. May have to rent out a track as a 300 turbo floored will go quite fast I'm sure. Still have leaks around breather and oil cap. Have you done a purge? Sorry to ask if you've explained previously. Don't understand how that would affect idle other than "cleaned up" nozzels. What oil are you using? Were you able to find out just where fuel leak originated? The lines between injectors can fool you sometimes.

85mph on flat ground. Nope, I don't have a tach. I kept it floored for about 10-15 minutes during the trip to HF store (25 miles) and likewise on the way back. Now people that suggested it in the first place tell me that I exceeded... pushing the car too much... risking to break something. But that was my understanding of what was suggested. The temperature rose a lot during a mountainous tract (uphill), went up to almost 200 F (never seen it above 175 F before) but normalized again at 175 F after a few minutes on level ground. Mine never leaked around the oil cap, but did around the breather elbow (hasn't leaked at all for a few days now, after the two tuneups). No, I haven't done a purge... I have no idea how it could affect idle speed, but it normalized it a bit, especially the days of the tuneups. What I noticed also was that during/after the tuneups the oil pressure gauge showed a pressure of around 30psi at idle (it never went below 45psi before, which is the max on the gauge). I don't know what that means. Now, a few days after the tuneups, it is back to 45psi, even at idle.
I have been using (dino) Delo 400 15W40 for the past two years. No idea how/where the fuel leaks originated... It only happened during the tune-up runs... there was fuel at the base of one injector (nothing detectable elsewhere)... You might be right that perhaps it came from the return hose tract above that injector, but I checked that right away those days and it did not seem that way...
What's funny is that I still have a lot of blowby (always had) but after the two tuneups there is no longer oil leaking at the breather elbow (and that's something that went on for two years...) And I can tell for sure because I washed the engine with degreaser two days ago and there is absolutely not a trace of oil anywhere in sight (or on the garage floor)...

Glad to hear things are going good. Sounds like a purge may not help a whole lot. I do it for GPs. The oil pressure thing, usually hot engine will show lower OP, viscosity reduces at higher temp. My gauges are all centigrade. As it turns out, my tach is between 2900 and 3100 at 65-70mph. I'm using Rotella 15-40 with MOA and some Tuf Oil. Temp flucuations seem normal to me.

Have you ever heard about an "automatic transmission fluid purge?" That is, adding a couple of quarts of the cheapest ATM to every other tank of fuel for the first couple of thousand miles... Supposedly, it will clean the injectors, engine parts, etc. even better than doing the kind of diesel purges we are generally accustomed to... There are some people that apparently swear by it... while others say that it is just an old wives' tale... What do people here think about such practice?

slight improvement, but really a waste of time. tranny fluid in the filters as you change them will put a strong shot of the detergents where they need to go. putting it in the tank will do little.
John

Thanks John. Would you say that putting it in the filter (in my case just the screw-on type - I don't see how I could fill the small inline one too...) is comparable as far as cleansing efficiency to the lubro molly diesel purge? How about doing the tranny fluid thing using the same method used for the diesel purge? (You know, placing the fluid in a jar connected to the main fuel filter and fuel pump?) Will the engine run on transmission fluid for a while (as in the case of the lubro molly diesel purge) or are there likely to be problems doing that?

like I said, slight improvement mild really.
the DP is waay better. I never did get you that company name to order it from, did I ...sorry.

Sorry to run business to the competition, but worldimpex.com has the best price @ under $6/500 ml can, just bought 4 cans myself, most other sources don't even have it in stock! To flog the oil change horse, I think a big factor is HOW CLEAN does your engine run-my 300D doesn't run a lot of miles, but the oil gets sooty/dirty EXTREMELY quickly (mainly due to it's weak compression); by way of comparison, the Cummins (and the Power Stroke common-rail 6.0 Ford) can run in excess of 7500 miles and the oil really doesn't look that bad-I did an oil analysis on the cheapest diesel oil I could find-Pep Boys Proline 15W40 in the Dodge, after 5000 miles and nearly a year's time the oil was only halfway to it's max soot level. The 300D is probably that bad after 50 miles!! In reference to the old carbureted gassers, the oil failed MUCH quicker due to fuel contamination-I've seen newer fuel injected motors that you could practically eat off of the inside of the valve covers after 150K-for instance my '94 Suburban, 350 TBI, with over 203K, has ZERO blowby, and is nearly spotless inside (had to do the intake gaskets recently). If you can run them hard, at operating temp for 45 minutes, at least every couple of weeks, I would think that an injected gasser could go a year between oil changes. In my experience, there is NO substitute for oil analysis, period-everything else is PURE GUESSWORK!!:rolleyes:

Thanks for the input... And no problem, you probably have been very busy...

Thanks for the tip! Their shipping charge is unusually high though (cheapest for one can of DP to Los Angeles, CA is $10.20 UPS ground)... However, if you buy several items within the same order (assuming the price doesn't go exaggerately up as you add items to the list) it makes it worthwhile.