DD15 engine eating one gallon of oil for every 5000-6000 mile, Please advise.. :(

The only issue is also that 5w30 HDEO is only offered in a full synthetic. 10w30 is offered in both syn blend and conventional varieties. Detroit does not mandated use of synthetic oils in their engines. Allow it, yes. Mandate it, no. Detroit, from the EPA10 DD Engine Users Manual, allows 5w30, 10w30, 5w40, 10w40, and 15w40 in their DD engines. Only requirement is that it meets 93K218 Detroit specs, has a sulfated ash less than 1%, and has a HTHS of 3.7 or higher (40w) or 3.5 or higher (30w). From the 2016 Detroit Lube manual.

 

Some good info there. Thank you.

 

why do you think running 15w40 will make problems later ? all oil change places and truck stops use this oil unless you tell them to do synthetic.

 

No, if it is impractical to use something like a 10w30. No one carries the brand or grade of oil I use, so I get it in bulk from my oil supplier and when I am due, I have 10 gallons in jugs in the side box.

 

If you're in the Southern California area. PM me your number Ill reach out to you and maybe I can help diagnose your issue and possibly repair it depending on the cause.

 

It won't have any issues from my experience. DD's came out the factory with 15w40 and some of the new ones came out the factory with 10w30. Believe it or not the MCM needs to be reprogrammed if you're using 10w30 in a 15w40 engine. You will have oil psi issues. We had a truck at the Freightliner dealer that kept throwing low oil psi codes and come to find out they were using 10w30 instead of 15w40 and factory said it needs to be programmed to run 10w30 or else you will have low oil psi issues and codes. The truck left with 15w40 oil and a bunch of new parts.

 

Aper thanks for info. I will dig in MCM to see it.

 

I'm sure yours is set for 15w40. The factory has to send the calibration and file to the dealer to reprogram the MCM. This was about 3 years ago I can't remember correctly, but it was something similar in those ranges.

 

For the older DD15's you might be correct. My DDEC IV S60, 10w30 worked just fine in it with no ECM changes. But DD15's for the last few years have gotten 10w30 as factory fill so a non issue.

Not sure about major oil PSI changes that would cause an issue. When hot, under full load, 10w30 was only, maybe, 4 psi less than 15w40 in my S60. That would make sense, since 10w30 is a lower viscosity than 15w40 or 5w40.

 

Series 60 isn't programmed so precise like the DD engine. Most GHG14's did come with 10w30 factory fill and some even have a label that indicates to fill up with 10w30 only. I personally prefer 15w40 and believe it or not we swung engine swaps at 14,000 miles and 28,000 miles and even 50,000 miles on the GHG14 engines. It was more rare for a EPA07/EPA10 DD engine to come to the dealer with locked up mains or a simple rod thrown out the block that destroys the MCM on it's way out... not sure why we seen more engine failures on the newer engines.