Oil Pick up / sump clean. A 'for reference post'

[tt ted]

Hi all

Just taking the S3 out of its winter hibernation. I only use it a few times a week and as it was due its service i had the pick up pipe change and sump cleaned.

I have it serviced at AMD Essex and as usual they were excellent. Cost me £90 incl the new pick up and took some pictures for me. My 2001 AMK has done 94k with services as below. It is now on 10/40 as per AMD recommendation - it runs completely standard:
I only chnaged the pick up as a precaution having seen some of the posts on here and the horrible pictures of them all clogged up. I had also changed the dipstick etc before it deteriorated so no plastic was found in there either. For the money i am hapy that i got AMD to do it as its probably a bit beyond my comfort zone, - and messy!

14 months 16k Long Life Audi
20 months 29k Long Life Audi
38 months 45k Long Life Audi
58 months 58k Long Life Specialist
65 months 69k Long Life Audi
77 months 79k Short service Audi
89 months 91k Short service AMD
103 months 94k Short service AMD

As you can see from the pictures - http://photobucket.com/audisump really not that bad at all. Anyway just posted for others reference..

 

[Customboy]

Very nicely done !

 

[aragorn]

Why on earth are companies recommending 10w40 for these cars, espeically given their sludge tendancies, you should be using a decent fully synthetic oil, in 5w40 grade.

 

[Vwdan80]

Considering ur service history I would have stuck with long life oil 5w 30

 

[aragorn]

Long life servicing is a load of toss, and 30weight oil is a bit thin once these engines start getting on a bit.

A decent 5w40 synthetic is what i'd be using.

 

[tt ted]

I hear the oil argument, i am no expert on oils though.

A mate is a fleet/service manager for over 30 AMK VW group motors - run up to 150k on occasions. He says something similar to '30 weight burns and **may** start to cause sludging', there was no sludge in mine at all, and if its serviced ever year, covering less than 2k miles a year, not driven hard he and AMD both said 10/40 - so i went with it.

But i do hear the argument. Thanks for opinions - always welcome