There's been some confusion about the quantity of oil the Xfire holds. It takes 8.5 quarts to fill it. I decided not to wait until my local dealer gets the proper filter in stock as I wanted to get the break-in particles out of the engine. Went to NAPA & got the SLK320 filter & did it myself. Not your normal oil change :shock: . First you have to remove the plastic pan that covers the whole bottom front of the car(just 4 screws hold it on) to get to the drain plug. The filter is a cartridge that is located on top of the engine (cool deal). Drain the old oil, unscrew the filter cartridge, remove the old filter & o-rings from the housing, put the new ones on & screw it back in. About a 1 hour job the first time (had to figure out where everything was & make sure I didn't break anything), probably 1/2 hour next time.

 

NAPA had the 0W40 Mobil 1? I find that grade pretty darn hard to find.

 

Mouserider- they did not have 0w40 so I went with 0w30. It's not going to be in there very long so figured it would be ok.

 

I have some great information about how to easily change the oil in your Crossfire without getting dirty but the admin deleted my post because he's having a tiff with the admin from another website. Girls! I guess you'll have to google.

 

Feel free to post the link again. What the admin of the other forum has posted this past day, is a complete distortion of what really happened, and to put it bluntly is filled with fabrications, and accusations of things that I had nothing to do with. If you would like to hear more about this PM me, as this isn't something I want to discuss in these forums. It doesn't help this community. You may now post links to crossfiretalk if you would like.

 

Thanks, Admin. I'll leave your beef with the other guy between you two.

Here is a link to a website about changing the oil with the Topsider MVP vacuum canister. I've read elsewhere that they work well. Since the oil filter on the Crossfire is on top, it makes oil changes a breeze.

http://www.leonoff.net/pages/slkpages/oilchange.html

Here is a place to get the Topsider MVP vacuum canister. I found one locally at a boat supply retailer. This link is ugly so if it doesn't work, try a Google site search at www.skilimited.com (not an endorsement).

http://www.skilimited.com/xq/asp/clickpath.1012~/base_no.AA-OC/str_base_no.3IT-1M,BE-...

 

The 0W40 Mobil 1 was at Wal-Mart for about $5 a quart. Just be sure to change the oil filter first so oil trapped in the filter housing drains into the oil pan. It should only take 6 quarts to fill it.

 

For those of us that are **** about our Xfires, and wanted to change our oil early, what mileage would you suggest doing that?

 

I use the oil can to change the oil in my boat (500+hp) and it works ok. It takes quite a while to suck the oil out but it works.

Pure synthetic oil change mileage used to be 7,000 miles with a filter change + 1 qt. at 3500 miles.

Do not own Crossfire yet! What is their recommended oil change frequency?

 

The Crossfire has a service schedule system which calculates the required service interval based on several factors gathered from the car.

It starts the counter at 7,000 miles default for schedule A.

 

I know a Mercedes mechanic who said he would never go with the service intervals indicated for any Benz, including the SLK. He said his take was that the manufacturers put in these inflated intervals becaue (on the Benzes) they pay for maintenance for 4 years / 50K miles. It saves them money if they extend the interval. He said with synthetic oil, he'd go to 5,000 miles. Just a thought. I don't plan on running this Crossfire out to 7,500 miles before a change. By the way, he thought it was funny that Chrysler is using a 7,500 mile interval, whereas Mercedes uses 10K as their interval for the same engine.

 

When I picked up my car I discussed the oil interval with my dealer. He zgreed with me that 7500 miles for the first oil chamge is really pushing the envelope. We agreed that the first oil change will be around 3500 miles just to be safe.

 

Next time I'll use my glasses... I was tring to using the oil level indicator and I could have sworn that it said I was 1 quart low... so I added I quart of 0W40 Mobil 1 sys. Today checking again it now says I'm "HI". Sould I now drain the old since I'm now 1 quart of oil over to avoid any damage to the engine etc. the owners manual say to so... Help.

TIA

 

0-40 Castrol? a drag racer friend uses it with his alum. block motor. Any pro/cons on this? Getting mine on April 1th (April fool ) ha ha. :lol:

 

I did mine this weekend. 5k miles. I'll draw up a faq w/ pictures this week.

It took all 8 bottles of Mobil one 0w40 which was stocked at AutoZone.