Not my first Mercedes, but my first new(ish) one. My other Mercedes is a 1985 300D. Let me apologize in advance for any newbie, stupid questions I may ask. I have been reading this forum and googling for about the past week, and still have a few questions.
I'm going to pick this car up later this week. It's about 900 miles away, so before I drive it back I plan on at least changing the oil (unless I find out it was just changed, with a full synthetic oil). Before I change it, should I run a motor flush through? I have on past cars, seems to help get sludge out, but not sure if it's wise to put it in a newer Mercedes. BTW, some quick trivia, on older cars a lot of people would just drain their oil, fill it back up with kerosene, run for a few minutes, drain, and then refill whenever they wanted to get the sludge out. I've been told the motor flush you buy is basically just kerosene, but I'm not about to try that on my new car! Just some trivia you might like. I did that once on our old 90 Grand Am and even on our 2000 Hyundai Elantra when I was converting from regular to synthetic, and after a few minutes the kerosone looked just as black as old oil (the Elantra wasn't even high mileage, it was below 50,000).
Second, from reading here it looks like the best oil to use is Mobil1 0w40. I live in Tennessee, and we do have a full four seasons but the winter is pretty mild compared to up north (might get in the teens overnight a few times, but rarely gets in the single digits). Summers are hot and humid, been in the 90's for a while now (90 here is probably worse than 110 in the desert, where there's no humidity). Now, I'd love to use Amsoil, I've used it in all my other cars (including the 300D), haven't had an engine problem yet (unless you count the water pump that went out in our 01 Dodge Intrepid, since it was built into the engine). Is Amsoil approved, and better yet is there anything (besides Amsoil's literature) that shows it is better than Mobil1?
Thanks for your time, hopefully I can figure out most of the other maintenance questions on my own.
I'm going to pick this car up later this week. It's about 900 miles away, so before I drive it back I plan on at least changing the oil (unless I find out it was just changed, with a full synthetic oil). Before I change it, should I run a motor flush through? I have on past cars, seems to help get sludge out, but not sure if it's wise to put it in a newer Mercedes. BTW, some quick trivia, on older cars a lot of people would just drain their oil, fill it back up with kerosene, run for a few minutes, drain, and then refill whenever they wanted to get the sludge out. I've been told the motor flush you buy is basically just kerosene, but I'm not about to try that on my new car! Just some trivia you might like. I did that once on our old 90 Grand Am and even on our 2000 Hyundai Elantra when I was converting from regular to synthetic, and after a few minutes the kerosone looked just as black as old oil (the Elantra wasn't even high mileage, it was below 50,000).
Second, from reading here it looks like the best oil to use is Mobil1 0w40. I live in Tennessee, and we do have a full four seasons but the winter is pretty mild compared to up north (might get in the teens overnight a few times, but rarely gets in the single digits). Summers are hot and humid, been in the 90's for a while now (90 here is probably worse than 110 in the desert, where there's no humidity). Now, I'd love to use Amsoil, I've used it in all my other cars (including the 300D), haven't had an engine problem yet (unless you count the water pump that went out in our 01 Dodge Intrepid, since it was built into the engine). Is Amsoil approved, and better yet is there anything (besides Amsoil's literature) that shows it is better than Mobil1?
Thanks for your time, hopefully I can figure out most of the other maintenance questions on my own.