wow, didnt know that about the benz's.

imagine if they adopted this years back, before suction devices. ud need a mechanic with a not so popular repuation for being "good at sucking" to get at all those liters of oil...

^ huh? Dude what are you smoking lemme have some.

It' just a vaccuum pump hooked up to a thin tube....

I call your bluff. Tell me which dealer. Shouldn't be too hard since there are only 4 in GVRD right? Or do you just get all your information off car magazines? :rolleyes:

slammer, what suction pump are you using? I got one from princess auto, hand pump, that works well.

^ Mityvac 7400. Normally it works well but this time I think I got too excited and stuck in too much hose.. :rolleyes:

maybe 80 bucks if you drive a smartcar.....my oil for 0w40 mobil 1 is already exeeds $80...shop rate is 125/hr and the filter is 20 bucks....

tell me which approved mb dealership that does oil changes for 80 bucks before taxes.


edit: im gonna to call your bluff and say if you can find me a mb dealership to do my oil/filter change for 80 bucks, i will GIVE YOU 80 bucks...

I've only used mine once, and found the hose not long enough to use from the ground without kinking it.

I'm going to sell it and buy the powered one.

12V powered ones suck.

Get pneumatic ones for best performance.. and no small ass containers to worry about.

I've dropped countless pans over the years and found all sorts of stuff inside (including lots of plastic bits and pieces), and not one of those engines ever had a problem.

Too many "experts" here who obviously never rip engines apart.

Why would plastic melt? Run through your bearings? Give me a break. Do you know how many parts on your engine are plastic?

The only reason I'd drop the pan is if there's a problem putting the dipstick back in because the hose is jammed inside the dipstick tube. In that case, I'd just change the tube itself.

And I also don't buy that sucking the oil out is better than the drain plug. How do you know if your hose is actually on the bottom of the pan, and not only that, but in the lowest part of the pan (where the drain plug would be located). I call 100% BS on the idea you can suck more oil out than what would come out through a drain plug.

As to plugging up the oil pickup screen, the only things I've seen plug a screen are silcone (way too much used on an oil pan gasket) and sludge. I've never seen any other material clog a strainer.

You do know there are near infinitesimal variations of plastic since they are hydrocarbons in the end. They have a huge variations of melting points right? from low 70s to high 300C? That's part of the versatility.

There are tons of plastic applications for engines (intake, belts etc).. eg the latest Mercedes 4 cylinder has a nylon reinforced zytel oil pan.. But can you honestly guarantee any plastic any tubing one use to evacuate fluid can survive 200C? Most polypropylene variations you find only have a melting point of 150C (if you are lucky).

Draining vs Sucking oil (we are talking about).. yields nearly the same results.. plenty of people in e92 tried it, ie drain / pour / suck = same amount of oil.. the only difference for BMW / MB and VW TDI drivers is just convenience.. since the filter is on the top, if you have the oil evacuator you don't have to lift the car.. and as I've said, it improves the turn around at the dealership too, since you don't have to put the car on the hoist.

The mitivac suggests warming up the oil by running the engine first. I assume it has a high melting point.

Actually no it doesnt really.. once it gets hot it degrades and becomes brittle. How else do you think they are able to mold them into tubes using relatively low temperature in an industrial setting?

Engine warm = more oil goes to the heads of the engine + weaken your tube = more spare parts for mityvac.

godwin: Mityvac actually does recommend warming up your engine - it's right in their manual. They also recommend not to evacuate fluids hotter than 80C. Both of these are interesting facts, which we'll get to later.

I checked all our lines/hoses at work. One thing you will note is that everything in your shop is rated several times higher than what you would use it at. Air lines carrying shop air at 150 PSI have hoses/lines rated at 300 or 600 PSI. Tubing that is used to handle fluids of 100C is often capable of handling fluids at 200 to 300C.


I thought you were an engineer or something? If you have a product designed to operate with a "load" of 100 units, you don't use a component that can only handle a "load" of 101 units - you need a safety margin. This is why you see things like lines/hoses being used to handle "loads" that are at least 2 and often 3 or more times lower than what they are capable of.


Getting back to the Mityvac and their suggestion of 80C for fluid temps. Firstly, by telling you to warm your engine up they're not expecting ridiculously high oil temps as that would go against their 80C recommendation. In fact, letting your engine idle (no load) would never get the oil very hot (only driving under load would get oil really hot). Secondly, since they recommend use up to 80C we can assume that the tubing/components they've used can handle temperatures far higher (probably at least 2 times and maybe higher). Which means the tubing they use could easily operate under 160C and probably higher.


Therefore, there is no way in hell Mityvac tubing would ever melt inside an engine.

Err you might want to read up on the original post. I am talking about the tube that the original poster "lost" in the pan. If the original poster had driven it to the dealer/ shop.. it will get warm enough for the plastic to get warm and melt. Of course unless he lives close enough to the dealer (ie practically next door).

Think about how an engine works.. especially if you don't have dry sump.. when the car is off, most of the oil get dumps into the oil pan.. if you warm up the car, yes you oil pressure and some oil recirculating to the top of the engine, but does it achieve anything beneficial? Sometimes manual is not right that's where critical thinking comes in.

The heat temp of polypropylene I quoted is general material specs.. no engineering limit. Like it or not they all have similar melting points. When you quote MityVac.. 80 degrees vs 160 degrees of course it won't melt.. however if the OP needed to drive the car to the dealer.. please don't tell me it won't reach the region of the melting point.

Wait... if crap settles at the bottom and you're siphoning from the top... wouldn't the crap just stay there?

Depends on what stuff.. Most oil evacuator has a small flex tube, which I think the OP broke/drop.. which allow some movement on the pan.

Here is what i do besides using the oil evacuator:
1. Replaced drain plug with neodymium one.
2. Send oil sample to Blackstone labs.
3. Drop pan about every 5 oil changes (I change oil ~8500km).. my oldest car is my e36 which I got since new and it just turn 16, I think I have only dropped the pan 3 times. Just a visual inspection and to get an additional sample..

So far everything the report indicates everything is normal. I usually get about 8.3L out.. which is about how much I put in, 8L initially and perhaps half a can during the year to top up. The only pain about the evacuator is stupid Mobil10W40 comes in 1L can, and it makes filling out waste oil a bit of a pain.. which in the end I just resort to milk jugs.

For your reading pleasure. BTW, its step 1 incase you miss it.

http://www.mityvac.com/user_manuals/07400.pdf

Again I would only use the manual only as a guideline.. and it seems to only give the ceiling of the operation temperature.. (ie not to go over 80C).

In my application, I use 0 weight oil and all my cars are kept in temperature regulated structures.. I just can't see oil to congeal to a state and require warming up for an oil change.

Of course YMMV but we live in lower mainland I just can't see oil freeze. I rather get the most oil rather than warming the car up.

The pertinent section:

godwin: I don't know why you think the tubing will melt. There is no way in hell the temperature in the oil pan is going to reach 150C. Did you know many oil temp sensors are mounted in the pan? How many cars have you driven where the oil temperature reached 150C?

Sometimes you engineers overcomplicate things, so I'm going to prove this the easy way without talking about what the tubing is made of.

I'll take a piece of the tubing from one of our Mityvacs and I'll heat it until it melts. I'll measure how hot it gets before it a) starts to get soft and bend easily, and b) when it breaks down into something that could get sucked into the oil pump.


But I already know the answer - the temps needed to melt the plastic are going to be substantially higher than you'd ever see inside an engine.



All that piece of tubing is going to do is lie in the bottom of the oil pan and do nothing. It's not going to melt, it's not going to plug the strainer and it's not going to damage anything.

For someone who doesn't believe suction is better than dropping pan.. you sure have a lot of mityvac at work! ;)

If you are measuring the melting point, make sure you are using a calorimeter, so that you can normalize ambient temperature. It is much more accurate to be converting from Joules, than just putting a torch to it.

I am not sure about other engines, but on my own engines that I play with on the e39 M5, e46 M3 and my gf's 335i, the temp sensors are mounted as a module along with the oil pumps.. It is much less accurate but it seems that's where BMW like to put it. Even though there are kits that can relocate to the pan for the most accurate reading. Not sure about Mercedes, but the pans I deal with don't have that many wires sprouting from it.

Why must you comment if you're not sure.

MB's oil level sensor is at the bottom of the block usually next to the drain plug.

That aside, we're all arguing about whether the tube will melt or not. Personally I wouldn't care. There's something stuck inside my engine and I'd want it out, especially if its only going to cost 2 hrs labour to drop the pan.

That's the thing, erichalfbee asked me half many sensors are on the pan.. and other than oil level sensor on the pan (and one temperature sensor if relocated).. I can't think of any other sensors (usually) on the pan.

Most of those sensors are made out of plastic similiar to zytel which and handle ~300C.. they are definitely not polypropylene.

My point is huge family of plastics out there.. ones with low melting point and ones with high melting point.. polypropylene which mityvac uses as piping belongs to low melting point type.. that's why they are cheap, easy to mold and what I say can melt. As I've said before Mercedes is using plastic as its oil pan in its 250 CDI, that can obviously handle the high temperature.

if you run the car for 5 minutes, i think most of the crap gets mixed evenly into oil.

I would say, on certain MB models, suction at the dip stick is the same as drain plug if not better. I'm sure that on a W163 ML430 V8 engine, there is no different, I'd personally opened up the drain plug hoping for at least 1/2 quarts of oil to drain, but not even a drop came out. However, on a 05' W203 I4 supercharged engine, there's at least 2/3 quarts pour out from the drain plug even after using suction from dip stick.
On non-MB cars, I've tried Subaru WRX, Honda H22A engine, Ferrari F360, BMW E46 330i, Porsche 993, etc. They are all designed to be drained from the bottom, let alone the dry sump on the Ferrari and Porsche which require extra care.