Keith Browning Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 So, yet another topic at the monkey house about oil dilution... oil sampling and the Oil Change Required warning on the IP. Apparently in the service manual it is listed as oil dilution warning. Really? So the question was asked about the oil dilution levels when the warning comes up in the dash. The nice helpful chap Cory from Ford replied: There are two oil warning lights that show up. First one is at 7.79% oil dilution where the message in the cluster is “Change Engine Oil Soon”. The second one is at 8.2% oil dilution where the message in the cluster is “Oil Change Required”. Okay. For me this raises more questions than it answers. How is this calculated? And, well I remember being told that the oil change messages were calculated by mileage, engine hours, Idle hours and load... or something like that. Ohhh my brain hurts! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jim Warman Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 I would suggest that Ford gets things straight... especially if they are going to "reveal" stuff to the public that they aren't filling us in on. I did find this quote - "ENGINE OIL DILUTED (diesel engine only) — Displays once the engine oil has become diluted and needs to be changed. Refer to your diesel supplement for more information." - in the owner guide for 2011. I was sent to this by the Diesel Owners Supplement. I haven't come across anything in the WSM yet. So far I see no mention of how dilution is determined. Those of you with access to message board might start a series of threads about how "knowledgeable customers with internet ideas" are affecting your service departments. I know that whenever I hear "I see on the internet...." that life is about to become interesting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Browning Posted June 20, 2012 Author Share Posted June 20, 2012 But this is also a contradiction. Is the message center providing the owner with a service reminder or an oil dilution warning? This automatically implies that there is something wrong with the engine and when there are unknown variables like the oil weight, HOW MUCH oil was put into the engine and how long it has actually been there. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bruce Amacker Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 OK, this goes back a while but I'll repeat what I remember. When the VT365 was having trouble with injectors leaking IH released a calibration that watched oil pressure rise upon starting and used it to determine fuel dilution in the oil. If the oil pressure did not reach X within X seconds it was determined that the injectors were leaking fuel into the oil and set a fault code for X. Of course, I can't find any TSI or IKnow letter right now so I can't get the details correct, maybe Blown99 will chime in. Maybe Ford is using a similar algorithm to determine oil dilution. I'm tight on time and on my way to the airport. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jimmy57 Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 Software that uses existing sensors to infer certain things can be a great idea and a great help. BUT, inferring things from somewhat unrelated data is why a person might go crawl into a storm drain when a train is passing instead of it really being a tornado. I could see a valuable tool in using oil temp, idle speed, and an oil pressure sending unit (not equipped....) to track declining oil pressure at sampling points that are repeatable to set warnings. Time to 8 psi on start up is too vague and influenced by parking angle. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DieselD Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 I am having my doubts about the reliability of the message center oil change soon message. We had a fleet truck that went 6k miles, a year of time, and about 1600hrs idle time and never popped up the message to get it serviced. I checked the ids to see if it was the driver ignoring the message but from data it never seemed to warn him in the first place. Based on hours alone it should have had several oil changes during that time. That situation makes me wonder about the rest of them and how accurate they are Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Brad Clayton Posted June 20, 2012 Share Posted June 20, 2012 We still use stickers in the corner of the windshield. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cetane Posted June 21, 2012 Share Posted June 21, 2012 First off I think the statement the guy from "Ford" can be a little misleading. If you purely look at oil dilution then you could say that at 8.2%(not sure where the 7.79% came from) the oil change required message will pop up. The ECU looks at a number of variables including but not exclusively, oil dilution. Some of the items are estimated but are calculated using variables that are fairly well known so the calculation should be close enough. So to answer Keith's question, the cluster is giving both a service reminder and a dilution warning although contrary to Jim's comment I do not see any reference to a specific cluster message calling out a dilution issue. As for why you guys are the last to know this information, your guess is as good as mine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Keith Browning Posted June 21, 2012 Author Share Posted June 21, 2012 Okay, I finally had time to sit down and read the 2011 Owner's Guide and there appears to be two different warnings, well three to be precise, two for oil change and the other for oil dilution. [*]ENGINE OIL DILUTED (diesel engine only) — Displays once the engine oil has become diluted and needs to be changed. Refer to your diesel supplement for more information. [*]ENGINE OIL CHANGE SOON — Displayed when the engine oil life remaining is 5% to 1%. [*]OIL CHANGE REQUIRED — Displayed when the oil life left reaches 0%. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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