Advice on keeping my car "healthy"

focae

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

Change the oil and filter at 500miles, don't accept any argument

You did start off using a logical if flawed argument.........but now you really are talking a lot of old tosh!

focae

vaio wrote: »

Either you are writing gibberish or I’ve lost my comprehension ability but either way I don’t understand what you are saying.

I am afraid you must be losing your comprehension ability. In the document that you quoted and supplied a link to are the following statements:

"This condition occurs primarily when the engine is operated at oil change intervals beyond those prescribed in your owner‘s manual, or

when oil with lower quality than Audi recommended standard is used."

"What We Would Like You To Do If your engine is running normally Audi strongly recommends that you maintain your vehicle as prescribed in the enclosed Owner's Manual insert. No other action is required."

Nowhere does it mention changing service intervals or performing intermediate oil changes - or are you reading what you want it to read rather than what it actually says?

girlracer

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

Change the oil and filter at 500miles, don't accept any argument

Lmaooooooooo :rotfl:

focae

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

My view is this, I said it before or in a similar topic the recomended oil change frequency is the maximum mileage not the minimum

You too are guilty of reading what you want to read rather than what is written...............................recommended oil change frequency is what it says on the tin...........it is the recommended oil change frequency.

Of course you are at complete freedom to change it at any time throughout the service interval (every 500 miles if you so desire!), all I am saying is that you will have little effect on the service life of the engine and therefore throwing money away.

We aren't talking the days of yore here when you did have to perform your first oil change after 500 miles on your brand new 1600E Cortina. Cars don't run on Castrol 20W/50 anymore, or have the manufacturing tolerances of a Meccano clockwork motor.

Yes , modern engines fail but usually due to mechanical failure of an accessory or internal part of the engine due to a manufacturing or assembly fault. (You will note that the post quoting Vauxhall 2.2ltr engine failures claimed that this was due to oil change frequency but the attached documents actually said that the failures were due to rupturing oil filters which obviously had a design or manufacturing fault).

Failure due to wear these days is fairly rare. Engines of the Cortina/Viva era were well past their useful life at 100,000 miles. Modern engines usually outlive the bodywork or the cars are scrapped because the cost of keeping them on the road due to maintaining brakes/exhausts/clutches/cv joints etc. etc. becomes prohibitive.

cyclonebri1

DomTom wrote: »

500 miles?? where did that come from

Jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjust maybe I meant 5000 miles, eh;)

focae

cyclonebri1 wrote: »

Jjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjjust maybe I meant 5000 miles, eh;)

Phew!...........I did wonder

vaio

focae wrote: »

I am afraid you must be losing your comprehension ability. In the document that you quoted and supplied a link to are the following statements:

"This condition occurs primarily when the engine is operated at oil change intervals beyond those prescribed in your owner‘s manual, or when oil with lower quality than Audi recommended standard is used."

The key word here is “primarily”, this is PR dept wriggling because that looks much better than “We managed to bug ger up the recommended servicing instructions so badly the US consumer authorities insisted we look after our customers by offering an unprecedented (for 2004) 8 year unlimited miles engine warranty.”

Do you really think if the sludge problem was confined to cars that hadn’t been serviced in accordance with the recommendations Audi would have been even remotely interested? They were forced to give the warranty because two year old cars serviced exactly according to the book were destroying engines due to sludge. Hell they even extended it so if you had paid for sludge related repairs previously you could get your money back from Audi. The warranty only applied to cars serviced to the book.

focae wrote: »

"What We Would Like You To Do If your engine is running normally Audi strongly recommends that you maintain your vehicle as prescribed in the enclosed Owner's Manual insert. No other action is required."

Nowhere does it mention changing service intervals or performing intermediate oil changes - or are you reading what you want it to read rather than what it actually says?

The key word here is “insert”, this was an insert to replace the original servicing instructions in the owners manual, it changed the oil to fully synthetic and reduced the oil change interval from 10k miles to 5k. They also introduced a new filter which was about double the size of the old one.

vaio

focae wrote: »

......You will note that the post quoting Vauxhall 2.2ltr engine failures claimed that this was due to oil change frequency but the attached documents actually said that the failures were due to rupturing oil filters which obviously had a design or manufacturing fault......

Agree with you about old v new engines but the 2.2l Vauxhall engine had two issues, both listed in my post above.

One was the oil jet blocking which damages the cam chain, the other was oil filters bursting which damages everything.

Both faults were caused by overly optimistic oil change intervals which leads to sludge build up and the sludge then blocked the oil jet or filter.

The cures were an increased oil jet size (from 1mm to 6mm as I remember), bigger oil filter and reduced oil change interval from 2y/30k to 1y/20k. I think they also improved the oil specification as well

vaio

OP

This thread has gone “slightly” OT but there is lots for you to think about.

My view, for what it’s worth, is that manufacturers err towards the optimistic side when specifying servicing intervals to reduce apparent servicing costs.

They do this primarily to attract the fleet buyers and as such have no real interest in what happens to the car when it gets towards 5 years old/60k+ miles and beyond.

Generally they get it about right but sometimes they get it badly wrong (1.8T Audi engine and 2.2l Vauxhall being examples).

If you are intending to keep the car long term I’d still recommend an intermediate oil change, my car has essentially two 3 cylinder versions of the 1.8T Audi engine joined together to make a twin turbo V6. It gets fully synthetic oil every 6k/6 months, is just coming up to 200k miles, uses no oil between changes and (tempting fate here) has never needed any engine work apart from a cam belt etc every 80k.

Other might disagree and argue that it would have lasted just as well if I’d changed the oil every year, they might be right but for the small extra cost involved I’ll carry on my way.

cyclonebri1

girlracer wrote: »

Lmaooooooooo :rotfl:

God, your name says it all, don't recognise a typo when one smacks you in the face:rotfl::rotfl: