Long idle time
 

Monday this week, I left my house for a 3 day work trip. i drove my 87 300D to a park n ride to ride the work van to Rockford, Illinois.

At my hotel that night i couldn't find my car key. I searched the van the next day and came up blank.

I called my wife and asked her to go to the park n ride and see if i left the key in the car.

She called me the next morning, she said there was a note from the Greenfield Police department. I left the car running!

When i got back to Milwaukee, i picked up my key. I parked my car 10:30 AM Monday. At 5 PM Tuesday they got a call from a concerned commuter that a car was running all day. At 6:30 Pm a deputy arrived and shut off my car.

My car idled for 32 hours!!!

I am lucky on so many levels.
I still have a car.
My cooling system is in good working order.

When i got in it, it started right up, but when i first pushed the pedal down, you should have seen the black cloud behind it!

So how much fuel do you think I used?

I filled up the car on the way to work, after 32 hours of idling, just over half a tank left.

change your oil as soon as you can...

Crazy. You've got good people around there. Consider yourself lucky. Buy a lottery ticket. Take the vehicle out for a good hard drive and agree with changing the oil.

An idling Mercedes is the devil's workshop.

Talk about lucky! You didn't even run out of gas and have to prime the fuel system.

Yes, change the oil and take it on an Italian tune-up. Also Id do a diesel purge and run adds regularly for the foreseeable future.

I would just go about changing all fluids for the sake of preventive care... Its just smart just in case.

Don't worry to much, a few years back we lost power for 11 days and I kept the house powered with the 240D and the 300D. I think its was around 8 days of idling with the 240D and 3 for the 300D , and I've seen no adverse effects.

From just random info I've come across, a lot of the 123's are in use as taxi's, and that equals a lot of idling time. And didn't a taxi set the mileage record?

Oil change, there will be a lot of condensed fuel and moisture in the oil.

Other than that, give it a nice highway cruise, get it up to temp for a half hour if you can, and a couple of good full-throttle runs up the entrance ramp or "Italian Tune-Up".

It'll be fine.

I think before working on the car you need to get a normal 8 hours of sleep! How can you walk away from a running car and not realize it? :eek:

Your car probably used around 11-13 gallons of fuel roughly....