I dumped the oil in my wife's new CRD at 1000 miles and put Rotella T in it with a new filter. I found it almost impossible to read the dipstick since the oil was very clear and there wasn't much contrast between the dipstick and the oil. I used some fine sandpaper to sand the black coating off of the bottom of the dipstick which did two things: It made the oil stick to the dipstick better and gave me a clearer contrast to view the actual level. The dipstick is a nice shiny silver color under the black dipstick coating.

I will second that the dipstick is hard to read.
My fix was this:

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