I changed the Fuel Filters (main and prefilter) on my 85 300D the Wednesday night. While doing so I tightened some connections, messed around in the engine compartment moving lines and wire around and admired my recent A/C and HVAC rebuild on the car.

Thursday morning I noticed a plume of smoke coming out my exhaust as severe as the worst I've seen--you know, you come up to an intersection and you see an old car blowing a plume of smoke that literally duplicates an engine fire, and you tell your daughter, "thats what happens when you dont maintain your engine, that car will be dead by tomorrow"---I never thought it would happen to me, since I'm a maintenance freak and the engine doesnt lose a drop of oil between engine changes...I thought the fuel mixture was overly rich or something--didnt dawn on me it was my Oil!!

200 miles later when I got home I noticed the engine knocking. Tired,and suffering froma terrible fatigue lately... I didnt pay attention, I figured it was time to clean the injectors, retime the pump, it didnt occur to me that my oil was down to probablydown to 1/2 a quart.

Today I woke to do the repairs. Thats when I noticed my Oil pressure at 0 bars! I checked!! All the oil was gone. Its true I rerouted some hoses on top of the fuel filter when I changed it, but I did nothing else.

I have the car back to running normal, but I was only able to duplicate the condition briefly this afternoon by crimping the oul breather hose on top of the valve cover--Is that what might have caused this? I run a staright piece of 5/8 inch tube from the valve cover to the nipple on top of the air filter it hooks up to to eliminate that oily mess this connection generates.

1) What caused this oil loss? Could a crimped/restricted oil breather line cause this?

2) I made it home literally on the last drop of oil. I couldnt believe I started the car today several times and idled it on no oil. I cant believe it didnt sieze right there.

This car has been great until this incident..
85 300D. Sudden oil loss (7.5qts) after fuel filter change out---Why?

Carrameow,

That's what happens when you fix something that ain't broken.

P E H

How do you know his fuel filters were not plugged?

If you blocked the crankcase breather the increased pressure can spit out quite a bit of oil thru various seals, this is especially true with engines that have some blow-by issues already.

I'm at a loss to explain how you lost 7.5 quarts of oil, this kind of a leak would be 3 orders of magnitude greater than anything I've ever experienced.

If this amount of oil really leaked out of your car you should have NO problem finding where it came from. Have you looked under the car? Have you looked at your driveway? Has the EPA contacted you about being reimbursed for clean-up expenses?

How much oil pressure did you have during your 200 mile drive home?

If he blocked the breather and sufficient blowby was present it would have shut off the engine by activating the vacuum shutoff valve on the injection pump. Or the blowby would have had to exit someplace else.

Seems hard to believe 2 gallons of oil would just disappear in 200 miles without visible leaks - out the tail pipe, rear main seal, ...

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Brian Toscano

If you were smoking as bad as you describe, that oil had to be getting into the combustion chambers. The only time I have ever seen that happen was when the PCV valve failed on a 67 Sprite I owned and it was sucking oil directly into the intake manifold. Something similar must have been happening with you.
I don't think you have the diaphragm vacuum pump, so I don't think oil could be going in the intake that way.
Could the turbo seals be bad enough to suck in that much oil?
Did you stick the tube you used, far enough into the valve cover that it was surrounded by oil and was vacuuming out the oil into the intake?

Did you disconnect your oil pressure line and connect it directly to the fuel filter and the engine was running on its own lubricant?

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

I have seen bad turbo seals cause this..
Check the breather plumbing first as already suggested..

__________________

79 240D my current toy
42 years a Diesel addict

240D sold
250SE sold
220D sold
280C sold
280S sold
300D (2) sold
300CD sold
300DT sold
300SD sold
380SL sold

Tim,


Miniscule chance that both filters will need changing at the same time. Even when I got a tank of contaminated fuel in CO, neither filter plugged at the same time.

P E H

If Carrameow's car is anything like mine, the oil pressure gauge is always pegged at 3 Bar at cruising speed. If pressure would be too high there'd be no real way to know.

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DJ


84 300D Turbodiesel 190K with 4 speed manual sold in 03/2012

1) The oil didnt leak out the engine --it went out the tail pipe.
2) There isnt a drop of oil at the places where I parked that day-- I went back and checked..
3) Some unique combination of engine pressure gradients is causing this, I still think the crankcase breather tube is the main culprit.
4) Drove the car 15 miles today after restoring everything back to the original plumbing configuration, the car didnt lose a drop of Oil.

5) Car has power, plenty of it, but its knocking like crazy and needs to be retimed.

6) I'm being cautious and I'm going to retime the engine, start from there, check the Turbo--'


7. No oil in the vacuum lines that go to do the Doors et cetera, I checked,,,

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if it's knocking, I doubt it is a matter of timing. With the lack of oil, it is likely to be the bearings that are knocking. It would only take a few minutes of driving with 0 oil pressure to cause that damage.

__________________
1977 300d 70k--sold 08
1985 300TD 185k+
1984 307d 126k--sold 8/03
1985 409d 65k--sold 06
1984 300SD 315k--daughter's car
1979 300SD 122k--sold 2/11
1999 Fuso FG Expedition Camper
1993 GMC Sierra 6.5 TD 4x4
1982 Bluebird Wanderlodge CAT 3208--Sold 2/13

That does not sound good. I don't think that timing would be an issue if the IP was never touched in the first place. I hope for your sake that I'm wrong.
I have talked to a mechanic I know about the older M-B diesel engines and he said it is difficult to kill them even by running them out of oil. He described to me an incident where an owner of a 240D ran the car out of oil and the engine seized. The engine was resurrected, without any rebuild, by just letting it cool down and refilling it with oil. It ran fine afterward.

__________________
DJ


84 300D Turbodiesel 190K with 4 speed manual sold in 03/2012

how did the timing go off

__________________

79 240D my current toy
42 years a Diesel addict

240D sold
250SE sold
220D sold
280C sold
280S sold
300D (2) sold
300CD sold
300DT sold
300SD sold
380SL sold

I had too many cars that were my own creation and I couldnt keep up with them...a 91 Volvo with a boosted turbo, a 240D with a hand rebuilt tranny and engine, a 300D with a rebuilt engine, my wifes Corolla aith a rebuilt Carb, too many projects = Neglect

Carrameow,

I agree with Kerry that its your rods that are knocking from running without oil and not a timing problem. The reason that car that siezed didn't damage its bearings is because the pistons siezed in the cylinders before the bearings were damaged. MB engines are no different than any other engine in that they must have oil to protect the bearings from overheating and melting the babbit metal.

If you are lucky, you didn't destroy the crankshaft and you can repair the engine by replacing both the rod and main bearings. Don't drive it an inch more before you check the bearings I.E. pull the oil pan and check for looseness of the rods. You will be able to feel play in a bad rod bearing by hand. Is also easy to see a bad bearing when the rod or main bearing cap is removed. If the crankshaft journal is rough, you are in for a regrind on the crank.

Sorry about the bad news.

P E H