Granted

I don't know 240Joe so the reference is lost on me. You only do annual oil changes, eh? And how many miles do you rack up per annum? Anybody else on here NOT doing regular mileage - based oil changes? It would be interesting to see how many do 5k, 3k, more, less, etc.

Sure they have. Plain OLD diesel. Not this NEW ULSD stuff. I don't know about CO, but around here, ULSD has only been the standard at the pump for about a year now. If you're willing to gamble that the lower lubricity ISN'T going to result in accelerated wear and pump failures, feel free, its your car. Having seen and personally experienced the massive wave of failures on the Ford pumps, I'd rather play it safe rather than sorry this time around.

BTW, it took several months for the trend to become apparent in the Ford pumps. Maybe it will take a couple of years with the MB pumps, who knows? The old Ford IDIs are generally regarded as a 300k motor, and the pumps were always good for 150k-200k. Now they seem to be commonly failing at closer to 100k for those running straight ULSD. From what I gather the MBs are generally considered a 500k motor, so what took six months to a year on the old Ford pumps may take 1-2 years (or longer) on the MB pumps. All I can say is I don't intend to be on the loosing end of that gamble. Not for a few cents a gallon for the occaisional tankful of ULSD I buy. I don't add anything to my normal fuel - which is B5. But I will still continue to carry a bottle of 2 stroke oil or PowerService in my trunk for those times when I can't get B5.

It seems like a lot FI's arguments are just plain stupid. If someone wants to make there vehicle last as long as possible then more power to them. Just because MB original suggested OCI of 5000 doesn't mean that it is the optimum for reducing wear.
The other thing is you are depending on fuel suppliers to always do as they are suppose to in adding additives. Something that wasn't needed with fuel these engine were designed to run on.
It appears the optimum fuel for optimum lubrication is a biodiesel blend. Personally I'll be using an additive when I can't get a BD blend. Weather you do is up to you.
If optimizing lubricity keeps your car from leaving you stranded out in BFE then it could be priceless.

FWIW, I now have over 50K miles on my IP with ULSD (I replaced it about 1.5 years ago with a reman from phil). I would like to see the "new" IP last as long as possible, but a good reman only costs about $900 and I am likely to buy a replacement long block before this IP wears out. If you think fuel additives are worthwhile, you should use them. Personally, I don't see the cost/benefit in most cases (even if you have to replace your IP every 100K miles, which is very unlikely, we are talking about less than $0.01/mile.

It's not just about IP's, injector nozzles wear out too if the lubricity is inadequate.

As far as oil change intervals go, the best way to determine one is to do repeated oil analyses and watch the wear patterns and soot numbers. Changing the oil too frequently not only results in waste but it may even accelerate wear because the engine wears slightly faster just after an oil change as the additives in the new oil are not fully activated yet. I'd say 3K is the bare minimum interval on dino oil and 5K should be no problem at all unless the driving conditions are extreme. With synthetic it would be a complete waste to change it before 5K miles unless the engine is dumping tons of soot or fuel into the oil.

With a newly remanned pump, I'd be less concerned. I have no doubt that a properly remanned one will last 100k+ on ULSD with no additives.

My concern is that my pump has 200k+ on it already, and less than a year worth of those miles are with ULSD. If ULSD accelerates wear, as I believe it does, then my concern is that a pump that is already half worn out, and then starts pumping ULSD, it may fail in fairly short order. That is exctly what happend with TONS of the old Ford IDIs.

If a few pennies per gallon of additive every 5th or 10th tank of fuel (the rest of my fillups are bio blends) extends the life of the pump & injectors by even 50k miles it is worthwile IMO.

I would be more worried about the IP seals leaking than premature wear. It is likely that your 200K mile pump will develop leaks long before the metal parts "wear out" due to the difference in lubricity. Mine was replaced at about 300K miles because it was easier to replace it than try to chase down internal leaks.

Just run B5 and be done with it. My Ford 6.9 and Mercedes run exactly the same as they did before ULSD.

Is there any internal rubber in an IP (other than the o-rings on later models)? I didn't think there was.

I don't know, but I assumed they had some internal seals/gaskets. My old one developed a leak some time after the o-rings were replaced and I didn't want to mess with it anymore, so I replaced it. I've never had one apart.

Mine run exactly the same on ULSD as they did on LSD, so I don't know what that tells us.

I think B5 is a good solution if you happen to live near a supply and you never leave home. I drove about 3000 miles in the last 10 days (about 8-10 fuel stops along the highway between CO and NC) and didn't see one single BD pump. I would probably use B5 is it actually existed in the real world.

Except for the fuel supply pump only the O-rings on the Delivery valve holders are exposed to the diesel fuel (and the ones that seem to leak the most). The there is at least 1 little O-ring in the fuel supply pump and there may be some more (I am not familuar with newer models) but it appears that they do not cause any problems that I have read on this fourm. Since they are exposed to a lower temperature and pressure they may not be as inclined to leak.

OM616/617 have no rubber o-rings on the delivery valve holders. Or are you talking about the copper seals? I would not call those o-rings. I assume by "fuel supply pump" you mean the lift pump. I've never messed with that one, but it doesn't sound like the o-ring in it would qualify as an internal IP rubber seal. Truly internal rubber in an IP would just be bad design and I'd hope MB engineers are smarter than that.

B5 is all they sell in the Portland area due to some biofuel law they passed. unfortunately you can only buy E10 too.

That's nice. With B5 you don't ever have to worry about lubricity. Cetane is a bit higher with it too.

He/She was a resident troll that kept pushing to NEVER change the oil. He/She claimed to have over 30,000miles on his/her oil.

It works out to 8,000-9,500miles per year. I do an oil analysis every 4,000miles to be sure everything is still good.

CO has been using it since summer of 2006. I watched as the Suncor refinery a mile from where I worked rebuilt their systems over a period of ~2months to start ULSD production.The Ford-MB thing doesn't even compare. The Fords are completely lubricated by fuel, MB is lubricated by engine oil.

PS is not one of the best, they use alcohol-based solvents.