I recently purchased a 2012 BMW X5 with 3.0 L engine.
Information tells me the engine takes 6.9 Qt. of oil.
Before changing the engine oil, indicator shows oil at MAX Level.
So with no dip stick i am interested in how to verify the indicator is reading correctly
so i put in 6 Qts; and drove it a few miles and the indicator tells me the oil level is at MAX.
Now i am not believing the monitoring system.
Could anyone give me direction on what i might do next??
Thanks
Greg
Don’t some BMW’s have 2 oil drain plugs? So if you only remove 1 you will leave about a quart or so in the engine?
Unless you measured the oil you dumped and know it to be more than 6.5 quarts, I suspect you have somewhere between .5 and 1 quarts of old oil in there on top of the 6 quarts of new oil added.
Another thing to realize, like most gauges in cars now, the readings are heavily smoothed out. I have no specific numbers, but believe from experience with the 3 BMWs I owned with electronic oil level management that the car has several ‘ranges’ it reports out. So it’s something like 6.5 to 7.2 quarts is ‘max’. 6.0 to 6.4 is halfway. Less than 6 is an empty bar and a low oil warning.
It’s certainly not reporting the level to the millimeter. And again, having owned several of these cars and spending a ton of time on the enthusiast forums, I’ve never heard of anyone reporting a problem with the sensor that didn’t also trigger a failed sensor message. Do like BMW wants; it says you have enough oil so don’t worry about it.
Thanks for your help.
Just a little new to me not having a dip stick.