[Mamil]

As I've said elsewhere on this forum, I don't think pushing service intervals out to two years is in the best interests of a long and trouble free life of the engine, and I suspect is being done to make the cars more attractive to corporate/fleet buyers who want minimum running costs for the short time they own the car, and who can sell it on before the first service is due.

It's interesting to hear that some of the engines themselves are asking for more regular oil changes

I myself have the 2.2 engine which LR say should have an oil change every year, but even then I do an interim oil change at six months. I plan to keep the car for at least ten years, and I think regular oil changes are the cheapest and best insurance you can get.

 

[Mamil]

I get interim oil changes on mine every six months/13,000kms, versus the 12 months/26,000kms published service interval for the 2.2 engine. I thought about doing them myself, but when I looked at the parts cost and hassle I decided to get the dealer to do it instead, and they gave me a good price.

The handbook actually mentions the need for more regular oil changes if used under "arduous" conditions such as high (or low) temperatures or a lot of off-roading or towing. But like you I just thought the published service intervals were too long, and my suspicion (voiced on here before) is that it's just to make initial purchase attractive, for fleet and lease customers particularly, and does no good for the long term reliability and service life of the engine.

My understanding is that the dealer doesn't reset the service interval at an interim service, so that the car still calls for the normal service at the normal interval. But there is a procedure for re-setting the service interval described in the workshop manual if you really wanted to do that. It goes like this - open both bonnet and driver's door, switch on ignition without starting engine, press down on brake and accelerator pedal for two minutes, and you'll get a warning in the message centre that the service interval was reset.

 

[Mamil]

But if they reset the service interval at 10k miles, then surely the car would then go a further 21k miles ie total of 31k miles before saying the next service is due?

 

[Mamil]

Thanks Dashnine! This is the first conclusive explanation for me why my DS wants a service at 1.5 years and 10k miles.

With my driving pattern with lots of short trips I assume that it has had numerous interrupted DPF regenerations and therefore a much higher number of regen cycles. Which increases the chance of oil dilution ...

Actually, in the same document Dashnine quoted from there's an explanation of why lots of short trips mean more dilution, and it's not about them being interrupted. It's because there are two types of DPF regeneration, active and passive.

Active is the one we all know about when the management system detects the DPF getting full and injects more fuel to raise the temperature and burn off the soot, and some of this fuel gets into the oil and dilutes it.

But when you use your car for longer & faster trips, the exhaust will naturally reach the high temperature needed to burn off the soot without the need to inject extra fuel (and the resultant oil dilution), and this is called a passive DPF regeneration. The more soot burnt off via passive regenerations, the fewer active regenerations will be needed, and the less oil dilution for the same number of miles covered.

So they key thing here is the ratio between active and passive regenerations, and if you do a lot of short journeys you have a higher proportion of active regenerations, and they are the bad ones for oil dilution.

 

[Mamil]

Or get a petrol engine if you do mainly short journeys

But more seriously, trying to drive the car so that passive regeneration temperatures are reached isn't very practical, so you're probably better off just letting the car do its thing with active regenerations, and changing the oil more often to compensate. Those who've seen my posts on other threads will know I'm not a fan of the extended oil change intervals LR are introducing anyway, and I do interim oil changes on my car as a matter of course. Not only does the DPF dilute the oil with fuel, but the EGR system fills it full of soot. Then with the start/stop system if you stop at lights the engine sits there hot without any oil circulation, then you accelerate off when the lights change before the oil has got up to pressure again. Unfortunately, these features are added to modern diesels to meet the emissions regulations but are not good for the long life of the engine, so IMHO regular oil changes are even more important. Meanwhile LR is going the other way pushing out the oil change intervals, mainly I think, to make the car seem more attractive at purchase time.

 

[Mamil]

My dealer isn't in the know, I have been having the 'Service Required' warning for several months and several thousand miles. The dealer insists its a software problem and I have to ignore it until the 21,000 miles service. (Which is booked in a few weeks time). The warning has been on my iPhone app since about 10,000 miles, I was told to ignore that too.

Not sure what use an app is if the advice is to just ignore it.

Telling the dealer about threads on this forum is pointless, it carries no official acknowledgement, I tried and they just shrug. It was a different matter when I raised the issue of tailgate water and showed them the official LR printout I had downloaded. What we need is something similar about oil changes/consumption. They would have to take that seriously.

But there is something official which says an oil change has to be done if the service message is displayed...

Diesel Particulate Filter Side Effects
The following section details some side effects caused by the active regeneration process.
Engine Oil Dilution
Engine oil dilution can occur due to small amounts of fuel entering the engine crankcase during the post-injection phases. This
has made it necessary to introduce a calculation based on driving style to reduce oil service intervals if necessary. The driver
is alerted to the oil service by a message in the instrument cluster.
The DPF software monitors the driving style and the frequency of the active regeneration and duration. Using this information
a calculation can be made on the engine oil dilution. When the DPF software calculates the engine oil dilution has reached a
predetermined threshold (fuel being 7% of engine oil volume) a service message is displayed in the IC.
Depending on driving style, some vehicles may require an oil service before the designated interval. If a service message is
displayed, the vehicle will be required have a full service and the service interval counter will be reset.

This comes straight from the Discovery Sport workshop manual - View attachment 5299 Print that off and show it to them and I don't think they can ignore that as being just forum gossip!

 

[Mamil]

Curious does anyone know how to reset the service warning? Just in case they do the software upgrade without my permission and I do go to an independent.

Yes, I described the process up there ^^ on page one of this thread.

 

[Mamil]

It was straight out of the service manual which someone kindly downloaded to the forum for everyone to access, and it was the Ingenium service manual, not that it would make any difference
However, not completely confident I remembered the sequence of actions exactly right so if you're going to try this I suggest you check with the manual first. I'd give you the direct quote but I'm on a business trip at the moment and only have my phone with me, and not my PC which I downloaded the service manual to.

 

[Mamil]

It's certainly true that a diesel engine (modern or otherwise) is not a good choice for short journeys. They are very inefficient until they get properly warm. However the LR Experience diesels do lots of short journeys and don't have dpf problems. I was told by an instructor that they use premium diesel (the expensive sort) and that this makes a difference. If you're not using the premium fuels I'd recommend giving that a go.
When talking about a 35K car Bunty, do you really need off-road capability? Because a lot of that money goes into the DS's ability to handle off-road situations. If you forego that capability, 35K will buy you a lot more car in terms of reliability, features, etc, from other manufacturers.

You make a very valid point there Past Master. I get the feeling that a lot of people are buying the DS because they like the looks (and then further pimp it up with things like the black pack and low profile tyres) while not really appreciating that they are actually buying a diesel 4WD vehicle. Then they are disappointed when it doesn't perform like a hot hatch.
Of course Landrover aren't going to complain when they are selling as many as they can build, and you could say it's clever marketing to position one car that can appeal to both someone looking for a hot hatch, and someone looking for a 4WD workhorse to tow a boat or caravan!
Hopefully the launch of the petrol engine in the UK (we've had a petrol variant here in Oz sinch the original launch) will solve some of these issues, and then I personally would like to see some additions at the other end of the scale with the launch of a 'rugged' pack which includes a larger fuel tank, spring lift, bull bar and winch, 15" rims with AT tyres, and under body protection. Then the DS could rightly claim to be the car that is all things to all people!

 

[Mamil]

Interestingly, when I told my salesman what I'd be doing with it he did advise me not to buy a diesel but then we have a petrol variant over here so he wasn't going to lose a sale He also told me the story of an owner who only ever used their diesel DS to crawl a few miles to work and back in city traffic, and it was for ever coming in to have forced DPF burns, and eventually it clogged completely and they had to replace the whole exhaust system. They ended up swapping it for a petrol one instead.

As you can see I ignored his advice and bought a diesel anyway as I'm not interested in performance (as you can tell by the fact I got the 150hp engine ) but do the occasional long trip, towing, and off-roading where the torque and fuel efficiency of the diesel comes into its own.

Anyway, I'm hoping all this will be irrelevant in a few years time, and my next LandRover will be an electric/petrol hybrid with sports car performance, incredible fuel efficiency, and amazing low speed torque all rolled into one :lol:

 

[Mamil]

The people I feel for are the unfortunates who will be taking on 3and 4 year old vehicles, out of warranty and with possible damage due to " Out of Spec" Lube Oil. I understand that Lubricating Oils have advanced greatly in last few years, but fuel dilution is a very present danger and so why would Landrover not simply specify a 10,000 mile Oil change? Cost to them- little!!

I agree, it's just passing the problems onto future owners, who won't have any redress to LR because the car will be out of warranty by the time issues arise! My theory as to why LR do it is to appeal to the fleet/lease buyers who don't want to pay for services during the time they own it. Personally, I do interim oil changes between LR scheduled services, as I'm expecting to keep the car for quite a few years, but I appreciate a lot of people on here turn their cars over much more often so probably wouldn't be bothered.

 

[Mamil]

On my desk is a 100ml oil sample which I removed by syringe this afternoon. In a week or so I expect to have the results of CFCS laboratory analysis showing what the actual percentage of diesel contamination is at this point versus the 4.2% figure that the car has calculated. I'll post the results in due course.

That would be interesting to see. Are you doing a full analysis or just for fuel contamination?

I used to do regular oil sampling and analysis on boat engines (large Caterpillar diesels) when I worked in that industry, and it's common in other industries like mining, power generation, and trucking where it's a part of the business as usual maintenance program for large diesel engines. Apart from giving a warning of 'exceptional' problems like contamination by coolant, it also shows the long term trend of various trace elements concentration in the oil, from which you can tell what components (for example piston rings, cylinder linings or main bearings) are wearing as they are comprised of different alloys, and schedule maintenance accordingly.

For our DS engines I'd be real interested to see what levels of fuel dilution and soot contamination there is in the oil, as both these are 'introduced' as by-products of the fitting of emissions reduction systems (DPF and EGR respectively) to meet regulations, but do no good to the engine. It's the price we pay for today's 'clean' diesels.

I considered doing oil analysis on my DS but you really need to do it regularly as the most useful results are trends over time rather than spot values, and decided in the end it would be easier to just do interim oil changes as a preventative measure. In your case where you have a specific question mark over oil dilution then it makes more sense, and I look forward to hearing the results.

 

[Mamil]

From further up the thread ^^

Active regeneration of the DPF is commenced when the temperature of the DPF is increased to the combustion temperature of
the particles. The DPF temperature is raised by increasing the exhaust gas temperature. This is achieved by introducing
post-injection of fuel after the pilot and main fuel injections have occurred.

Engine oil dilution can occur due to small amounts of fuel entering the engine crankcase during the post-injection phases. This
has made it necessary to introduce a calculation based on driving style to reduce oil service intervals if necessary. The driver
is alerted to the oil service by a message in the instrument cluster.

The DPF software monitors the driving style and the frequency of the active regeneration and duration. Using this information
a calculation can be made on the engine oil dilution. When the DPF software calculates the engine oil dilution has reached a
predetermined threshold (fuel being 7% of engine oil volume) a service message is displayed in the IC.

 

[Mamil]

Cheers, didn't spot that! Doh!

It's been a long thread :lol:

 

[Mamil]

The thing that concerns me is the figure of 4.2%. I had a good friend that sold oils and I am sure I remember him saying the if diesel oil is diluted over 2.5% then premature engine wear will occur. Hopefully JLR know what they are talking about!

Interesting you should say that because Honest John emailed me back to say categorically that the engine oil and filter should be changed NOW with the figures I have. Of course, that's probably good advice if the numbers are actually correct - hence why I'm taking no chances and having the oil professionally analysed. JLR are being, to say the least, a bit too relaxed about all this in my book.

Looking on an oil analysis site last night, they said they provide simply a pass or fail result on fuel contamination, and the threshold is 2%. So on that basis you're already a 'fail'.

 

[Mamil]

It isn't short journeys. Sample the oil in preparation for a full laboratory analysis including trace elements present in ppm before the evidence is lost and ask to see the diesel dilution estimate on the service reset page. My lab report is back and it isn't good news. I can't say more now but good luck with it.

Awww, how can you leave us hanging on like that! At least tell us if the oil analysis confirmed the engine's own estimate of 4.2% dilution?

 

[Mamil]

It isn't short journeys. Sample the oil in preparation for a full laboratory analysis including trace elements present in ppm before the evidence is lost and ask to see the diesel dilution estimate on the service reset page. My lab report is back and it isn't good news. I can't say more now but good luck with it.

Awww, how can you leave us hanging on like that! At least tell us if the oil analysis confirmed the engine's own estimate of 4.2% dilution?

The actual is 19% lower than the guestimate.

Thanks VDS, I'd say that's pretty good for a guestimate based on "driving style" compared to an actual measurement, and should give us some confidence the algorithm LR are using is a reasonable approximation of actual fuel contamination. Problem remains that the car only issues a service warning at 7% whereas anything over 2% is considered unacceptable by some industry sources

 

[Mamil]

Problem remains that the car only issues a service warning at 7% whereas anything over 2% is considered unacceptable by some industry sources

And that is the real issue. My oil is no longer 0W-30 and metal parameters are high or above recommended levels. The engine is basically not being lubed properly. It has done 5K miles.....

That's very worrying that the oil isn't doing its job, especially as yours is not even at the point where LR feel it requires an oil change, whether measured on the normal service interval or the fuel dilution calculation.

By the way, what did the soot levels come out as, as I have a suspicion that the EGR results in high soot levels as well?

 

[Mamil]

Does these issues with oil dilution by diesel during DPF regeneration also affect the 2,2L?

Based on a sample of one I'd say no. After 11,000 kms I had zero fuel dilution, as measured by an independent laboratory, not the guesstimate by the car software.

Anyway, my opinion of long oil change intervals on diesels is that its gambling with the engine. Max 1 year or 12-15 k km will be my guidelines independent of LR recomondations. EGR systems pollutes the oil so much and degrades the oil. On my former D3 with blanked EGRs I changed oil twice a year at 7-8k km.

Agree, I do oil & filter changes on my DS every six months, regardless.

 

[Mamil]

(To display service information)
On the IC scroll down to Vehicle Information, then Service Info. You need the ignition on, but the engine must be off to access the PCM mileage counter.

Thank you. Regrettably my car has no Service Info option in the Vehicle Information display.

Has anyone else got a 16.5 SE-TECH and can display Service Information under Vehicle Information?

If they can, then it looks like my car has been reprogrammed with the old software (that does not display service information), despite just coming back from being off road at my dealers for an extensive period, and specifically to get the car's software updated! Surely, that cannot be possible.

Hi Mike, mine is a 2016.5 SE (but Australian model with the 2.2 engine). I don't have service information displayed in the "Vehicle Information" field either, just the VIN number. Mine has just been in for its annual service and amongst other updates had "N010 - Service warning message not displayed" applied. If you find there is a way of updating our vehicles so there is a running countdown to the service in the Vehicle Info menu, then please let me know so I can get mine done as well