Engine Oil Warning Light

[staloy]

Hi all,

mileage just touching 20k (1st svcing not done yet). 318i...

yesterday, the light came up. Called the mergency service, the girl tell me the man will probably come and top up oil only. Well, in this case, i topped it up myself, abt 500ml.

I felt strange, how can the OIL Disappear???? i thought this only happened to our 190E (which we drove till Scrap). Our Volvo before never had this problem (but 15k svc interval).

Anyway, sent into service center today, the service advisor said, that it is NORMAL in our climate and driving condition.

So, i was thinking since the car is there, might as well just serivice.. my god, Kg Arang so full of cars and no more slots....arranged to send it in on Thurs.

I see that some fellow BMW drivers in this forum change their oils more frequently.. .but am wondering for the 'casual' BMW driver that does not practise... have ANYONE been faced with this Oil Disapperance Issue before.

Thanks in advance.

 

[yendor]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

Yep this happened to me too. I had the warning light come on after about 8000km after an oil change. When I called the Service Center, I was told to just top up the oil and that is why they provide 1L of oil everytime you svc there.

On consideration, i make some sense. There is a little bit of oil left on the cylinder walls when the piston comes down and this lttle layer gets burnt off. in 6 cly, there is a lot more cylinder walls to lubricate. Right now i change my oil every 10K to alleviate this problem.

cheers

 

[martmode8850]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

yes. our service manual indicates that oil does get consumed. what happened was probably oil level below the minimum mark. that's why the oil indicator light came on.

 

[Nightwind]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

sorry i need some help. My 320i engineoil indcator flashed and I called BMW emergency service.

The first guy came down, took a look at the indicator (showing 4/5 full) and said just top-up 1L with the oil BMW gave me.

I went home and collected the oil and called again the next day. This time a different BMW guy came and looked at the car and indicator and said he CANNOT topup the oil even when the indicator flashed.

I said just do it since I had the oil and he was already here but he insisted it may damage the car. He said it maybe an indicator problem.

I now notice when I am driving after 5 mins the indicator will flash and it will show oil only 1/4 full. But when car is at rest the indicator shows no problem?

What should I do? Have any of you experienced this before as my mileage is only at 16,000km?

 

[hetraa]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

weird...never happened to me before..but the newer N52 engines are known to consume oil.. best is check with the dipstick.

 

[Nightwind]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

The E90 engine oil gauge is computer monitored, you mean i can just insert an ordinary dip-stick in there?

 

[stevenwu]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

Hi,

Ask them to change the oil level senser. This could be the caused. The sensor itself has it own heater. This sensor uses the rate of temp change at the sensor to determine the oil level. If oil is enough, oil will be covering the sensor thus sensor cool down more quickly. The ECU monitor this rate of change of temp for oil level monitoring.

If the sensor give intermittent data to the ECU, then you may have this issue.
Since still under warranty, change it. Not expensive anyway.........

hope this help.

 

[knighty]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

Hi,
I had similar problem of 'disappearing engine oil'.
The engine oil level of my E90 hit Minimum when it clocked 6000km within 6 months. I topped it up to Maximum level and within a month, about 20% of the engine oil disappeared.
It remained at 80% level for a few days, and then it went back to Maximum.
I suspect I could have a mixture of faulty engine oill sensor and leaky engine problems.
Anyway, I've made arrangement to have it checked at PML...

 

[centurion]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

Engine oil usually disappears after you run the engine hard once in a while. the theory is this:

Oil gets mixed up with volatile fluids like water, fuel, and other gunk. During normal urban driving, start stop driving, the engine oil never reaches a high enough temperature. As your oil is depleting, it gets mixed up with other volatile liquids as mentioned, and you seem to NOT lose oil at all.

Then one time you run the engine hard, eg. going to KL. You'd be surprised the morning after you park your car for the night, your oil loses about 500ml to 1L. During loading of the engine, the engine finallly gets to reach a critical temperature where the volatiles evaporate/boiled off and you seem to lose a lot of oil at ONCE.

don't worry about it if you don't see an oil leak on your porch. If your oil is being lost through the pistons, very simply they will destroy your catalytic converter and you'll see a CHECK ENGINE light on besides the OIL PRESSURE indicator. If you merely get OIL PRESSURE light on on a new car, it's merely part of the breaking in process and you'll not have to worry a single bit.

 

[knighty]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

Brought my car to BMW workshop recently, and I was informed by one of the advisors that it is common for the E90 engine to burn off its engine oil. I think he also mentioned that it is typical for the newer generation BMW engines to 'consume' engine oil. So this kinda confirmed all the postings about this topic.

 

[matt07]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

Hi,

Ask them to change the oil level senser. This could be the caused. The sensor itself has it own heater. This sensor uses the rate of temp change at the sensor to determine the oil level. If oil is enough, oil will be covering the sensor thus sensor cool down more quickly. The ECU monitor this rate of change of temp for oil level monitoring.

If the sensor give intermittent data to the ECU, then you may have this issue.
Since still under warranty, change it. Not expensive anyway.........

hope this help.

hi. just got a 323i e90, and having the same problem with the oil. At what mileage do you guys send your cars in for servicing?
Thanks

 

[centurion]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

With some new knowledge now, I can say that the BMW guy who said that he cannot topup the oil even when the indicator flashed is doing the right thing.

BMW auto dipstick display is well known to be LOUSY IN ACCURACY. In several cases when the auto dipstick showed lack of oil, and the oil was topped up, in ACTUAL fact the oil was over topped up, and the oil destroyed the cats and caused them to disintegrate, and backpressure caused the engine to suck back the cat particles into the engine causing engine destruction.

The absolute safe way for BMW to handle this now, is to drain all the oil and refill.

Oil consumption is quite normal, but the sensor issue screws everything up. It is very very difficult to top up oil in all BMW engines without a manual dipstick now. There is no solution. It is a nightmare, especially if your engine is new and uses up oil in the beginning before it is truly broken in.

sorry i need some help. My 320i engineoil indcator flashed and I called BMW emergency service.

The first guy came down, took a look at the indicator (showing 4/5 full) and said just top-up 1L with the oil BMW gave me.

I went home and collected the oil and called again the next day. This time a different BMW guy came and looked at the car and indicator and said he CANNOT topup the oil even when the indicator flashed.

I said just do it since I had the oil and he was already here but he insisted it may damage the car. He said it maybe an indicator problem.

I now notice when I am driving after 5 mins the indicator will flash and it will show oil only 1/4 full. But when car is at rest the indicator shows no problem?

What should I do? Have any of you experienced this before as my mileage is only at 16,000km?

 

[yooooz]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

omg... my engine oil indicator appeared at around 6500km.. it disappeared after i restarted the engine... i called my agent and asked him the problem and he said just top up with the 1L oil that he gave.. i just topped it up...

is it too quick for 6500km to refill engine oil? is it an indicator problem or it my engine oil really low? hope my engine does no spoil cause of too much engine
oil inside ha...

driving the 2007 523 btw...

 

[phil]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

i think it happens because of the lame run in period kills the cylinder walls, thus oil scraping by the rings is not as effecient, hence blow by and oil consumption.

To me, it's VERY unusual for a new car to use oil like that. If it happned to a ford, holden, mazda, toyota or whatever, they would replace the engine. In fact they did with some GM cars

I think it's bollocks that BMW tells us that

In my humble opinion

CAys, would you be pleased if your new porker used oil? I doubt it even would

 

[aussieyen]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

hi folks. need yr advice. i've just had an oil change @ bvo last sat but while driving over the past 2 days, the engine oil warning light keeps popping out . my ride is a 5 yr old E46 with abt 62 km mileage. 1st time @ bvo , previous services @ PML.
is it an oil sensor problem that will go away or shall i bring my ride back to bvo to a check-up ?
many thanks in advance. cheers.

 

[phil]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

if the oil light is on, DO NOT drive the car.

E46 has a dipstick, check it. i bet it does not have enough oil. Did they change the oil filter as well?

 

[centurion]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

CAys, would you be pleased if your new porker used oil? I doubt it even would

That thing has like 20 litres of oil, something like 4 tubs of Mobil's finest. so far it has not used any oil, but I think that's because I'm pussyfooting it at 4200rpm. Definitely if I hit 7K rpm on a regular basis the volatiles will boil off and i'll start using up oil.

 

[boleh]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

Change to a higher viscosity oil. 10W-50

Too thin oil is not suitable and get burnt off in the pistons rings

 

[aussieyen]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

phil - tks for yr reply, mate.

bvo 's reciept did indicate that the oil filter had been replaced. well , the amber engine oil warning light did not appear while i was driving yesterday. anyway, will bring the car down to BVO.

 

[blinded]

Re: Engine Oil Warning Light

Oil consumption of appr. 0.2 to 0.3 l per 1000 km is absolutely normally and every combustion engine has that! But if you have oil change intervals of 7500 to 10000 km, you will not recognise it because the oil level is still not down to minimum until it gets drained and replaced. BMW oil change interval is appr. 24000 km, that means you will get to see the light and you will have to top up engine oil! Normal and described in the manual.