Hullo, oil fans,
Benzadmiral here, coming to you from the once-great city of New Orleans. I've been learning a lot from BITOG for more than a year, but this is my first post. I've searched for a similar topic and haven't turned up much, and very little about a car like mine.
It's a 1997 C230 Mercedes sedan, the normally-aspirated 4-cyl., 71K miles. I've had it a little more than a year. The previous owner apparently drove it only about 6K a year, and until Hurricane Katrina I only drove it about 9K. (I put a good 2K on it, though, evacuating to Texas and returning to NO. The little gold beast performed like a thoroughbred all the way and, at approx. 70 mph, returned over 30 mpg on the highway.)
Thanks to info here, I started this car out on Chevron Delo 15W-40 on a 3-month OCI, but found I was wasting money and oil changing at only 2400 miles. Also, I thought I could use a little thinner oil, to help with mpg (I was getting only about 22 with 75/25 city/highway driving). In June I went to a mix of 5 qts. Havoline 5W-30 and 1 qt. Delo, and ran it in NO and TX summer heat, mostly city but then including part of the evac run, for 3 mos./4K miles. Before returning to NO, I changed it to Trop-Artic Syn-blend 10W-30, and everything I've read here suggests I could keep it in there until 4K also.
My questions (at last):
1) I won't be doing a lot of driving between now and Christmas, with the city rebuilding, and those trips will be fairly short ones. It doesn't get terribly cold here; we rarely see even a freezing night, and almost never below 25 degrees F. Should I change by time, 4 months (which might be only 2400 miles!), or by miles (seeing it might take me 5-6 months to run up to 4K)? I can probably work in a long highway run every week or two, though.
2) Does anyone have a similar car, and if so, what grade of oil do you use? My owner's manual, cleverly, says merely to consult my dealer. Their recommendation is Mobil 1 0W-40, but I don't want to pay synthetic prices when I know (from my time here) that there are oils as good for a lot less dough. The temp/viscosity charts all say almost any grade can handle temps above 86 degrees F., which pretty much describes this viciously sweaty climate from March through November. If anybody has some specific recommendation that I should go to a xxW-40 oil, please let me know.
Thanks in advance,
Paul W. (the Benzadmiral)
Benzadmiral here, coming to you from the once-great city of New Orleans. I've been learning a lot from BITOG for more than a year, but this is my first post. I've searched for a similar topic and haven't turned up much, and very little about a car like mine.
It's a 1997 C230 Mercedes sedan, the normally-aspirated 4-cyl., 71K miles. I've had it a little more than a year. The previous owner apparently drove it only about 6K a year, and until Hurricane Katrina I only drove it about 9K. (I put a good 2K on it, though, evacuating to Texas and returning to NO. The little gold beast performed like a thoroughbred all the way and, at approx. 70 mph, returned over 30 mpg on the highway.)
Thanks to info here, I started this car out on Chevron Delo 15W-40 on a 3-month OCI, but found I was wasting money and oil changing at only 2400 miles. Also, I thought I could use a little thinner oil, to help with mpg (I was getting only about 22 with 75/25 city/highway driving). In June I went to a mix of 5 qts. Havoline 5W-30 and 1 qt. Delo, and ran it in NO and TX summer heat, mostly city but then including part of the evac run, for 3 mos./4K miles. Before returning to NO, I changed it to Trop-Artic Syn-blend 10W-30, and everything I've read here suggests I could keep it in there until 4K also.
My questions (at last):
1) I won't be doing a lot of driving between now and Christmas, with the city rebuilding, and those trips will be fairly short ones. It doesn't get terribly cold here; we rarely see even a freezing night, and almost never below 25 degrees F. Should I change by time, 4 months (which might be only 2400 miles!), or by miles (seeing it might take me 5-6 months to run up to 4K)? I can probably work in a long highway run every week or two, though.
2) Does anyone have a similar car, and if so, what grade of oil do you use? My owner's manual, cleverly, says merely to consult my dealer. Their recommendation is Mobil 1 0W-40, but I don't want to pay synthetic prices when I know (from my time here) that there are oils as good for a lot less dough. The temp/viscosity charts all say almost any grade can handle temps above 86 degrees F., which pretty much describes this viciously sweaty climate from March through November. If anybody has some specific recommendation that I should go to a xxW-40 oil, please let me know.
Thanks in advance,
Paul W. (the Benzadmiral)
