on my E320, this was normal if I didnt drive it for at least 30 minutes and I live in TX.

I have no empirical evidence of reducing this activity, but I did notice that this was a bit reduced when I resealed the breather caps on both valve covers - the passenger side one with the smaller breather hole clogs up completely and you will also see a similar mess in that breather cap usually accompanied by that cap leaking. The driver side cap with the larger hoses is usually very clean.

I used to fill it with 5w40 rotella or mobil1 0w40 and change it at 12000 miles along with a fleece type filter element bought from advance auto parts. The engine was fit as a horse till the day hurricane harvey claimed it.

btw - 2001 model year E320 would be a W210 chassis, I recall all W210 had a full dipstick in their engines, how come you only have the little sealed cap?

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2012 BMW X5 (Beef + Granite suspension model)

1995 E300D - The original humming machine (consumed by Flood 2017)
2000 E320 - The evolution (consumed by flood 2017)