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B Service Yes Or No

1K views 4 replies 4 participants last post by  Vivid 
#1 ·
Hi W203 forum,

My girlfriend has a 2004 C200K, she has only done it 3000 miles on it in just one year. The service indicator is saying that she needs a B service in 29 days but when you look on the computer is says that there is over 7000 miles to go until the B service.

The car is in perfect condition, does she need to take it in, or should she wait until she has covered the 7000 miles??

Many Thanks.
 
#3 ·
It's probably not free in the country you are in but it is in the U.S. for that year. So why take it in? because short infrequent trips are much harder on the oil and the engine that you can imagine. One of the bi-products of combustion is water. This water is of much thinner viscocity than oil and easily finds it's way past the rings and into the oil. In a normally heated engine going on a longer trip, the oil reaches a high enough temperature where the water evaporates faster than the combustion process creates it, no problem. In a car used for very short trips, it never gets a chance to heat up long enough to evaporate so it builds up over time and can cause internal engine parts to rust, not good. One sign is if you've seen cars with white smoke or a stream of water coming out the tailpipe as it's warming up and some don't is because a car used for short trips willl build up water in the exhaust system. These cars typically will corrode the exhaust system quicker, rot the engine out quicker than high mileage cars. Then people don't think it's necessary to change the oil so they ignore this and further damage their cars. My recommendation is to take the car out once a week on a longer ride, maybe 30 minutes and get the moisture out of the engine. When I had little ones and my wife didn't work I would take her car once a week to work to do this as her little trips to the market or pre-school at less than a mile or two were not good for the car.
 
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