[michael lang]

The general advise I give my clients went it comes to performing in between scheduled maint. oil changes is that it can't hurt. I have many of my clients looking at it as cheap insurance by having one of my techs under the car checking things over making sure the car is safe and reliable, & yes giving me an opportunity to generate parts & labor sales for my dealership. Since Mercedes has gone to FSS in '98 many people have been retrained to come in every 10K for their oil services and in '03 when Mercedes went to FSS+ when the new E-Class was introduced those that learned 10K had to be retrained to think to bring it in only when the car says its time for maint. in the instrument cluster. The point is that Mercedes Benz did alot of homework in developing this engine making it more efficient and lowering its annual costs of maint. Coincedently most of the highline manufcatures have spread the service intervals out so that it allows the marketing depts. to brag about how low costing the maint. is on that very expensive automobile. Now I'm only speculating here but it appears since Mercedes has removed the free maint. from its warranty coverage it's allowing the dealers to go back to looking out for their customers. Steve in all likelyhood you were probably turned away because BMW just like Mercedes has to include with its warranty documents when filing a claim a printout from your car's ecu that indicates what items the car is calling for, how many miles to service due, etc.... If it is more than 2000 miles, I cannot perform the maint. on an E-Class unless it has been 18mos or more since last service regardless of what the instrument cluster calls for. If your car has free maint. and uses a counter of some sort, changing your car's oil too frequently only lessens the number of free scheduled services that your car will get. The more you change your car's oil the oil quality sensors never really reset because they are constantly register good quality & correct oil levels therefore the mileage in the counter will always stay high, kind of like tricking the ecu into thinking that the car is always on the highway running at constant speed. My 911 usually gets 3-4 oil changes a year (avg 4k miles a yr) Shelly's Sienna gets to Toyota about every other month (15-18k/yr) the Xterra & the Pick Up get to Nissan about 3-4 times a year (5-8k/yr). Nothing beats a little goodwill!! My point is that it can't hurt to have the oil changed more frequently than what the manufacturer suggests but with todays technology and engine development it really isn't that neccessary.


Mike