Fuel for Thought

First 500,000 Miles

Early on I considered it a love/hate relationship. The van is a 2007 Dodge Sprinter 2500, which means it was the transition year from the T1N to the NCV3 style. Longer, taller, cleaner, more plush, heavier, more fuel, and more expensive to buy and maintain. The last 200,000 miles was more like what I was expecting of the Mercedes Sprinter experience.

Love. The dimensions allow loading three tall pallets, and there is still room for me to sleep cross-wise between the freight and the seats. A lifetime average of 20-21 mpg is less than the older models but still gives the main cost advantage over competing models. Extended service intervals help offset a little of the high cost of service. Install a Fumoto oil change valve, and the quick, clean, and ease of Sprinter oil changes is the highlight of Sprinter ownership. Too bad the same thought couldn’t have gone into the transmission service (more of that love/hate thing).

Hate. Dealerships are few and good service technicians are fewer. There is very little in between—the van is running or it’s being towed. The van is too light weight. What it should be is a one-ton truck without the dually rearend.

Service intervals. Some items by the book, some items fudged a little. Oil and filter change was a hard and fast 10,000 miles by the book, but…I only added 12 quarts of oil at an oil change which kept the oil level at the bottom line of the dipstick. Only occasionally did the low oil indicator trigger and that was always within 100 miles of the next oil change. The book called for 13+ quarts which always seemed to be such an unround number. And for those wondering I use Valvoline SynPower MST 5W-40, because NAPA distribution centers always have many cases of it, it’s regularly on sale for less than $6.00 a quart, and it’s on the MB 229.51 list of approved oil.

I’ve extended fuel filter changes to the range of 40-50,000 miles (book 10,000 miles). Transmission fluid and filter is changed every 60,000 miles. I consider highway miles easy miles, so I resisted the dealership attempts to put me on an extreme duty service cycle. Same goes for the differential and coolant system, so I stuck to the regular service interval of 180,000 miles. The serpentine belt is the hard system to gauge. I made it as far as 250,000 miles on one belt. I’ve settled on 150,000 miles, but usually something else has failed before then. Only one rule applies—if one part in the belt system needs replacing, I replace the belt, belt tensioner and idler pulleys together as a set.

Tires. The stock Continentals lasted 70,000 miles. They are perfectly fine tires for regular low mile use. For my kind of use I don’t think there is any tire better than the Michelin LTX M/S family; the current set are the M/S-2. I get over 200,000 miles a set. I get a good price at Costco, and they fill with nitrogen and do rotations for the life of the tire. I do not rotate at a set schedule. I watch the wear and when there is a noticeable difference between front and rear I have the tires rotated front to back. I used to keep the pressure at 65 psi or greater on all four, because steering was very sloppy when using the recommended 55 psi in the front. The M/S-2 is much more stable allowing for the lower pressure up front. For the M/S-2 the pressure stays at 55 psi in front and 70 psi for the rear.

Fuel. I’ve played with a couple theories on fuel. In the beginning I bought the cheapest diesel from national chains taking care to avoid ratty stations. Early on I started using a mix of Power Service and Howe’s Meaner Power Cleaner fuel additives (one shot of Howes, six shots of Power Service for every full tank). It seemed that if I wasn’t using the fuel additives the check engine light would be triggered. Even B5 biodiesel seemed to trigger the check engine light. The last 200K I’ve been sticking with only the major names like Shell and Exxon and have fewer check engine lights even when using B5. It appears to be more a fuel quality issue than an additive issue. One thing I wonder about is how accurate the Low Sulphur and Ultra Low Sulphur labeling was during the transition from D1 to D2. I had so many sensor problems the first 200K and not during the last. Since I’ve gone 500K without injector issues, I continue to use fuel additives in case that is the cause.

200,000. The first couple hundred thousand miles cost me more in down time than out of pocket expenses. The crankshaft position sensor, which later became a recall item, cost about a month of downtime and several visits to the shop. Service and repair costs together were less than $2000 per year. The Sprinter experience was spoiled by phantom sensor alerts, and very poor access to dealership support. Many little things like repeat shop visits due to things like dealerships overfilling the oil during routine oil changes. I was a high mileage over the road driver, and dealerships wanted to hold my van for four days to do something as simple as an oil change. I took off one year of high mileage driving, so it took about three years to consume the first 200,000 miles.

300,000. Rolling over 200,000 miles felt like arriving in hell. Starting at 201K to 300K on the odometer, I spent over $12,000 in service and repairs. One stretch involved two months out of service. A list of repairs—replace egr valve and one set of swirl valves, rebuild front end and replace right rear axle, partial rebuild of the transmission, new alternator, ruptured egr bypass tube, replaced driveshaft support bearings, and I replaced the  serpentine belt to have the belt tensioner fail and shred another belt three weeks later.

I was towed four times during the year of Sprinter Hell. I attribute the transmission failure to one of the tows. The tow truck couldn’t reach the rearend with clearance, so we towed the van from the front. We stopped en route to run the engine to circulate the transmission fluid (according to the book), but that apparently wasn’t good enough. Within weeks the transmission was flare shifting, requiring a rebuild or replacement. The rebuild saw about 300,000 miles of service. It also appears the front end rebuild was unnecessary. Those kind of repairs went away when I changed dealerships for service. In spite of all the work, I put the 100,000 miles on the van during 2010. And amazingly I never missed a delivery due to equipment failure.

400,000. The beginning of what the Sprinter experience should be like. Repairs and maintenance were $7400, and much of the work was a shake out of previous work or dealership neglect. Mostly I attribute the improvement to finding a Mercedes technician who troubleshoots the van with the aid of a scanner, instead of being a by-the-book scanner operator. The big pinch for the year was collision damage from a deer strike. The $4000 of damage was covered by insurance, and fortunately there was no mechanical or electrical damage. The problem that kept me out of service for four weeks was that one support member that held all the body parts together was not available in the US (standard repair, no parts).

The deer strike episode turned into a computer mystery. The ECM stopped talking to the rest of the vehicle, and a replacement ECM would not completely mate to the vehicle. After two weeks of engineering support from Germany, my Sprinter tech finally stopped listening to the engineers and devised his own way to trick the computer. In the end we suspect that the first computer wasn’t bad, but the new computer allowed the tech to see the component that needed to be “tricked”. The Sprinter tech managed to push most of the diagnostic hours back on Mercedes.

The remaining repairs were brake work, shocks/struts and an air conditioner compressor that seized and shredded another serpentine belt--typical maintenance. The air conditioner compressor is the only breakdown that interfered with any of my loads. Four miles out and an hour before pick up, I heard a clang and ripping sound, alternator warning light lit, and behind me cars on the interstate were swerving to miss all the parts falling off the van.

500,000. The final leg to reach 500K was the least painful. $9000 in service and repairs were spread out over a year and a half. The cost includes a replacement transmission that I decided to install instead of driving to failure. The other big part of repairs was having to replace the rear two sections of the driveshaft. Routine service is settling at about $1000 a year. The current write ups I’m sitting on are one bad glow plug and a slow oil leak possibly from the upper pan seal. I’m still trying to pinpoint the leak. If it is the upper pan seal, it is an easy job after $11,000 of labor to get to it (dealership work).

Thoughts at this point. Any vehicle works best when dedicated to one operator; the Sprinter more so. The operator should learn how to do their own oil and filter change and stock pile the proper oil. As easy as an oil change is, it is too easy that even at the dealership a non-certified technician, who doesn’t understand the importance of using the correct MB specified oil, can be assigned the task. Try to find a good shop and stick to the one place for any major work. Have a tow plan. Always have a two month cash reserve, minimum.

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