N52B25 engine oil level (OBC)

[ciars]

Now that I'm starting to do some miles, what is the typical oil usage on an N52B25 engine? I've done 5k since Valdas did some work and serviced it for me and the oil level has just come 1 notch off the max indicator mark on the OBC.

Does anyone bother with mid service top ups to keep the oil level at max, if so at what point should the top up occur?

Finally does anyone recall how much in litres between the max and min from the OBC readout? I've read around 1L but want to be sure.

[Peter-E36]

Yep, 1L between min and max. I used to fuss if it dropped st all below the max but that just led to overfilling and then getting some oil removed. Pain in the ass. According to the manual the car will tell you to top up the oil by 1L when it needs it (never waited/seen that myself), but then again it tells you to service the car every 17 or 18 thousand miles so I'd just wait until it's in the middle, put half a litre in and be done with it.

[ciars]

Thanks for confirming Peter. I'm a bit like yourself, think it's a bit of OCD

[rebel.ranter]

Just remember that the electronic dip stick will not recognise any top up less than 0.5L. At least this is true for my M6, it actually says this in the handbook too.
However I have noticed with my 630i that it reacts much better to lower top up amounts.

I don't know why there is different behaviour between the two as the oil level sensor is common across a lot of models (1, 3, 5, 7, all engine sizes):

http://bmwfans.info/parts-catalog/12617607910/

Both the N52 in the 630i & the S85 in the M6 use oil between services. I think that is true with most BMW engines.

BMW quote 600 miles/litre for the N52 as an acceptable threshold. But I think the reality should be much less usage in most cases.

[ciars]

Just remember that the electronic dip stick will not recognise any top up less than 0.5L. At least this is true for my M6, it actually says this in the handbook too.
However I have noticed with my 630i that it reacts much better to lower top up amounts.

I don't know why there is different behaviour between the two as the oil level sensor is common across a lot of models (1, 3, 5, 7, all engine sizes):

http://bmwfans.info/parts-catalog/12617607910/

Both the N52 in the 630i & the S85 in the M6 use oil between services. I think that is true with most BMW engines.

BMW quote 600 miles/litre for the N52 as an acceptable threshold. But I think the reality should be much less usage in most cases.

Thanks for the additional info. Mark. Interesting reading. Back of a beer mat maths here, to the eye I'm down 1/4 of a litre, if there are 4 set points on the OBC scale. So I'm using approx. 1L per 20K km's.

On a side note, I started looking at the water temps today also with the slight change in weather. It sits around 90-92 degrees tipping along the N7 at 110kmh. I have read about some variable heat management on the N54 due to the electric water pump that is fitted to them (it's also fitted to my N52). It could explain some of the fluctuations I saw on the drive earlier (92 max temp reached, 90 for the majority of the drive, lowest it got down to was on the M50 - 85 degrees) guessing that this was the increased airflow aiding cooling.

I have an extract from the piece on heat manaagement which I'll fire up in another thread for reference for anyone else interested.

Link here: http://www.bmwhaus.ie/forum/showthread.php?tid=7021