Thread: Oil usage and readings very strange - MY2014 TDV6

Originally Posted by DiscoJeffster

I’m not sure anyone can answer that as no one would be silly enough to try. From my experience anything under 5L would alarm on the dash. I don’t think you will get the answer you’re after however my advice is

Drain it using the sump plug (I always use a suction pump but in your case, do it from the sump). Change the filter. Fill it with 5.9L of oil. Check it on the dash after 15 minutes and ensure it shows full. Drive happily knowing it’s good. Drain it using your suction pump next time and check you get out over 5L. Anything less and your engine is drinking oil. If it’s less I’d double check with the sump again to ensure your suction pump works correctly.

Thanks.

Isn't the sump plug higher than the breather/extraction tube?

Originally Posted by 75Vette

Thanks.

Isn't the sump plug higher than the breather/extraction tube?

There’s a poofteenth in it but you are correct. The key thing is one can argue whether your extractor is working correctly and getting out all the oil - but one cannot argue with gravity and the drain plug, so as a baseline, in your case I’d use the drain plug and establish a baseline to work from, and use the extractor there after.

You could extract then drain to see how much was left.

Just to close this out, thanks to all that have responded.

No one has offered anything that would cause me to question my assumptions here.

I'm fairly confident that I extracted all the oil based on the following:

• Extractor had performed perfectly before (albiet 5 years ago) on the same vehicle.
• At the start of the process the extractor worked straight away and as expected, suggesting no functional issues.
• Visual and audio cues suggest there was no more oil in the sump.
• After adding extra oil to test it was immediately extracted, confiming the sump was empty.

Only ~4.2L was extracted, and it appears that between 183000km and 203000km my TDV6 did indeed burn around 1.3 to 1.7 L.

Even though only 4.2L remained, there were no triggers of low oil levels, and no observed adverse effects on engine performance or condition.

Now running 5.5L of fresh 5W40 and everything seems to be fine. Will update in 10000km or when my engine implodes.

You do realise the D4 3.0 is supposed to have 5.9 litres of oil...

And the best way to do it, is simply measure out 5.9l of oil and pour it in..

Originally Posted by Tombie

You do realise the D4 3.0 is supposed to have 5.9 litres of oil...

And the best way to do it, is simply measure out 5.9l of oil and pour it in..

I was going to say this but after all this discussion about the right quantity of oil, then OP puts in less than required, despite that being the point of the thread, I gave up

Originally Posted by Tombie

You do realise the D4 3.0 is supposed to have 5.9 litres of oil...

And the best way to do it, is simply measure out 5.9l of oil and pour it in..

Originally Posted by DiscoJeffster

I was going to say this but after all this discussion about the right quantity of oil, then OP puts in less than required, despite that being the point of the thread, I gave up

OP has put in 5.5 litres, it's half way on readout, arguably that's in the range of correct.
That said I'd put in the other 400ml, particularly as the OP is concerned it's using oil.

The question I'd like the hear answered, is if the oil was indeed 1.7 litres below full, does the electrical gauge not warn you? Or do you still have to manually check it?

Excuse my ignorance, my 95 Defender has one of those bendy metal rods you poke down a tube into the oil, to check the level 😁

Tony

Back to the original topic I have also just checked my oil (2016 3.0 SDV6) prior to carrying out a service tomorrow.
When using the service menu I am not even showing any oil. (yes did wait required time) The message was "below min level".

I recall last service I did I also only pulled out around 4 ltr, then topped it back up to where the level was showing full (don't recall if I added 5.9). Will drain tomorrow with suction pump, then oil plug and see waht I get.
Either way will top up similar to OP with 5 ltrs first then bring up to 5.9.