My car (new March 2014) was last serviced in November 2016. I probably only do around 5000 miles a year, so what sort of time should I expect to elapse before it next tells me that it's due a service?
Service Interval Question
- Thread starter steverobertsbbc
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With your mileage you should service it every 12 months.
I did ask them to put me on a fixed service interval the last time they had it... It's not an S3, BTW - it's an A3 1.8TFSI quattro.
RichardT
Registered User
Yes, you should have taken it in every year for service. All A3’s are set to variable when new. I asked for mine to be put on fixed when I bought it but they forgot. So I just took it in when a year old and got them to set it to fixed when they serviced it.
Or you can just ignore the setting and get it serviced every year anyway (just like we used to before computers!)
Or you can just ignore the setting and get it serviced every year anyway (just like we used to before computers!)
Carefree69
Registered User
RichardT
Registered User
It’s what Audi say. I guess that service requirements are not only related to mileage. It’s not good to go years without servicing.
Carefree69
Registered User
Agreed, but what’s the difference between doing low miles and having a yearly service or doing higher miles and having variable. In my head I’d have said your lower mileage driver is more suited to variable.
Confused.
Confused.
Low mileage generally indicates short trips right. So this is time the engine oil isn't hot for long periods of times.
Ie... When my mum was working the commute was 5mins, 2? Miles. Oil wouldn't even be 50c. Which is bad for oil isn't it. So yearly service to get fresh new oil.
High mileage = assumes longer trips. Oil should be healthier etc.
## I know ****** all about cars and engines but this is my guess haha ##
Ie... When my mum was working the commute was 5mins, 2? Miles. Oil wouldn't even be 50c. Which is bad for oil isn't it. So yearly service to get fresh new oil.
High mileage = assumes longer trips. Oil should be healthier etc.
## I know ****** all about cars and engines but this is my guess haha ##
Carefree69
Registered User
IF that is th case then I think my car will be the exception to the rule. I have a 15 mile (30-40 mins) commute to my work and back again (so 30 miles each day), however I don’t do huge miles overall. The oil in my car gets up to and stays at temp on pretty much 99% of my journeys and yet it is on variable servicing.
Does anyone have the definitive answer on this?
Does anyone have the definitive answer on this?
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Not my explanation or a definitive answer but sage advice if you can be bothered to read it:
Oil has to do some very important work inside an engine. The most obvious function is to lubricate the moving parts. An engine relies on lots of bits of metal moving up and down or rotating at very high speeds, and for it all to work properly they have to fit very closely together. But if they touch, friction will very quickly heat the surfaces and they will melt. So, oil is pumped around all the moving parts to provide a continuous thin film between them to stop them touching.
The second purpose oil serves is to carry heat away from the moving parts, heat from friction and the heat from the burning fuel. And finally, it has to mop up a lot of nasty stuff produced as a by-product of the burning fuel and store it in suspension until the next oil change - you might view an oil change as the automotive equivalent of a trip to the toilet.
In order to do all this the oil has to be thick enough for the thin lubricating film to stay intact at very high pressures to withstand all the buffeting which goes on - bear in mind that a cylinder "firing", is actually a mixture of fuel and air exploding and you'll get the idea.
And, of course it has to stay thick as it heats up. At the same time it has to be thin enough to circulate freely, especially when the engine's cold.
As the oil ages the combustion products build up. They are corrosive, so oils contain additives to neutralise them and stop them attacking the structure of the oil itself. The additives combine with the contaminants and new compounds form, some of which are not soluble in the oil, so precipitate out and stay in suspension. Most are filtered out by the oil filter - which is why it's there - but some settle out as sludge, which can build up in the narrow passageways and restrict or even stop the oil getting through - very much like arteries furring up from bad cholesterol. Like people who don't exercise, the problem's worse if the car doesn't get the occasional decent run. A 100 mile trip along a motorway will clear a lot of sludge, get rid of any water that's condensed in the oil - and help the exhaust last longer, clean deposits from the combustion chambers, charge the battery properly, clear a particulate filter and do lots more good things.
Eventually, however, all the additive gets used up and the waste products begin to degrade the structure of the oil. Even worse, if the filter gets full of sludge and blocked, it's bypassed, so all the dirty oil circulates round the engine - furring up the narrow oilways even faster and making the oil seem very thick. The harmful effect of this is not just the increase in viscosity and the restricted flow, but the fact that the oil is much less able to sustain the pressures between the bearing surfaces. Poor oil flow and degraded oil makes momentary metal to metal contact increasingly frequent and rapid engine wear results.
Turbo chargers are particularly prone to going bang in a very expensive way if the oil gets even slightly degraded - the high temperatures and huge speeds demand a constant supply of good, clean oil, so walk away from any second hand turbo charged car without a full and exemplary service history - just one late oil change can mean trouble looming. Even cars with a full service history aren't immune from problems, especially if the manufacturer has put the service interval up to 20,000 miles.
Extended service intervals have been blamed for such faults as snapping timing chains. They are usually lubricated by a spray of oil from a small nozzle. After a high mileage, the oil sludges, blocks the small hole in the nozzle and the chain, starved of lubricant, wears very rapidly then snaps.
So, infrequent oil changes run the risk of something breaking - but you might get away with it, so maybe the money saved on oil is worth the gamble. Sadly not, because dirty oil gives another problem.
Because the oil is saturated with the unwanted combustion products, it can no longer carry them away and neutralise them, so they hang around in the crankcase. A small amount of gaseous fumes circulating around the empty bit inside an engine is quite normal. These used to be vented to the atmosphere, but for many years now cars have had valves and pipes that feed these noxious fumes back into the engine to be burnt. That way they are treated by the emission reduction equipment of the exhaust system and don't end up as atmospheric pollution.
Normally this works very well - although the fumes are mixed with the air and fuel, the amount is very small and has little or no effect on the efficiency of the combustion. However, if the oil can no longer do its job of absorbing most of the combustion products, there is far more to be fed into the engine, so much that combustion is affected and the engine performs well below peak efficiency. Fuel consumption inevitably increases.
In addition, the exhaust gases are likely to be much dirtier than the emissions equipment is designed to deal with and the result is more pollution, and at MOT time a failed emissions test.
The cure for all this is simple. If you do a normal mileage - 10,000 miles a year or so - have the oil and filter changed every at least 12 months. If you do a very low mileage consisting mainly of very short journeys, you might want to change it twice a year - Spring and Autumn. And if you're a high mileage driver, change the oil and filter every 10,000 to 12,000 miles, whatever the manufacturer says.
Flushing oil used at an oil change will also get rid of all the settled sludge. It's not vital if the oil has been changed regularly, but it does help preserve the engine and, at around £10, it's certainly worth considering if you've just bought a car that spent it's previous life poodling down to the shops once a week. It might be low mileage, but it's the equivalent of a couch potato.
Do not allow the old oil to be siphoned out. It must be drained from the sump plug. Otherwise a sludge of contaminants will gather in the sump and eventually block the oil strainer to the oil pump.
So, it pays to keep the oil clean and change it regularly. Less fuel, fewer emissions and good performance are the rewards - and even if oil prices are at record levels, an oil change is a lot less than a new engine.
Oil has to do some very important work inside an engine. The most obvious function is to lubricate the moving parts. An engine relies on lots of bits of metal moving up and down or rotating at very high speeds, and for it all to work properly they have to fit very closely together. But if they touch, friction will very quickly heat the surfaces and they will melt. So, oil is pumped around all the moving parts to provide a continuous thin film between them to stop them touching.
The second purpose oil serves is to carry heat away from the moving parts, heat from friction and the heat from the burning fuel. And finally, it has to mop up a lot of nasty stuff produced as a by-product of the burning fuel and store it in suspension until the next oil change - you might view an oil change as the automotive equivalent of a trip to the toilet.
In order to do all this the oil has to be thick enough for the thin lubricating film to stay intact at very high pressures to withstand all the buffeting which goes on - bear in mind that a cylinder "firing", is actually a mixture of fuel and air exploding and you'll get the idea.
And, of course it has to stay thick as it heats up. At the same time it has to be thin enough to circulate freely, especially when the engine's cold.
As the oil ages the combustion products build up. They are corrosive, so oils contain additives to neutralise them and stop them attacking the structure of the oil itself. The additives combine with the contaminants and new compounds form, some of which are not soluble in the oil, so precipitate out and stay in suspension. Most are filtered out by the oil filter - which is why it's there - but some settle out as sludge, which can build up in the narrow passageways and restrict or even stop the oil getting through - very much like arteries furring up from bad cholesterol. Like people who don't exercise, the problem's worse if the car doesn't get the occasional decent run. A 100 mile trip along a motorway will clear a lot of sludge, get rid of any water that's condensed in the oil - and help the exhaust last longer, clean deposits from the combustion chambers, charge the battery properly, clear a particulate filter and do lots more good things.
Eventually, however, all the additive gets used up and the waste products begin to degrade the structure of the oil. Even worse, if the filter gets full of sludge and blocked, it's bypassed, so all the dirty oil circulates round the engine - furring up the narrow oilways even faster and making the oil seem very thick. The harmful effect of this is not just the increase in viscosity and the restricted flow, but the fact that the oil is much less able to sustain the pressures between the bearing surfaces. Poor oil flow and degraded oil makes momentary metal to metal contact increasingly frequent and rapid engine wear results.
Turbo chargers are particularly prone to going bang in a very expensive way if the oil gets even slightly degraded - the high temperatures and huge speeds demand a constant supply of good, clean oil, so walk away from any second hand turbo charged car without a full and exemplary service history - just one late oil change can mean trouble looming. Even cars with a full service history aren't immune from problems, especially if the manufacturer has put the service interval up to 20,000 miles.
Extended service intervals have been blamed for such faults as snapping timing chains. They are usually lubricated by a spray of oil from a small nozzle. After a high mileage, the oil sludges, blocks the small hole in the nozzle and the chain, starved of lubricant, wears very rapidly then snaps.
So, infrequent oil changes run the risk of something breaking - but you might get away with it, so maybe the money saved on oil is worth the gamble. Sadly not, because dirty oil gives another problem.
Because the oil is saturated with the unwanted combustion products, it can no longer carry them away and neutralise them, so they hang around in the crankcase. A small amount of gaseous fumes circulating around the empty bit inside an engine is quite normal. These used to be vented to the atmosphere, but for many years now cars have had valves and pipes that feed these noxious fumes back into the engine to be burnt. That way they are treated by the emission reduction equipment of the exhaust system and don't end up as atmospheric pollution.
Normally this works very well - although the fumes are mixed with the air and fuel, the amount is very small and has little or no effect on the efficiency of the combustion. However, if the oil can no longer do its job of absorbing most of the combustion products, there is far more to be fed into the engine, so much that combustion is affected and the engine performs well below peak efficiency. Fuel consumption inevitably increases.
In addition, the exhaust gases are likely to be much dirtier than the emissions equipment is designed to deal with and the result is more pollution, and at MOT time a failed emissions test.
The cure for all this is simple. If you do a normal mileage - 10,000 miles a year or so - have the oil and filter changed every at least 12 months. If you do a very low mileage consisting mainly of very short journeys, you might want to change it twice a year - Spring and Autumn. And if you're a high mileage driver, change the oil and filter every 10,000 to 12,000 miles, whatever the manufacturer says.
Flushing oil used at an oil change will also get rid of all the settled sludge. It's not vital if the oil has been changed regularly, but it does help preserve the engine and, at around £10, it's certainly worth considering if you've just bought a car that spent it's previous life poodling down to the shops once a week. It might be low mileage, but it's the equivalent of a couch potato.
Do not allow the old oil to be siphoned out. It must be drained from the sump plug. Otherwise a sludge of contaminants will gather in the sump and eventually block the oil strainer to the oil pump.
So, it pays to keep the oil clean and change it regularly. Less fuel, fewer emissions and good performance are the rewards - and even if oil prices are at record levels, an oil change is a lot less than a new engine.
Carefree69
Registered User
Very helpful actually.
The above tells me then that variable servicing REGARDLESS of mileage is a just bad idea. Either get your car serviced yearly if you do average miles (10,000-12,000) OR twice a year if you do much more.
That’s how I’ve read it anyway.
The above tells me then that variable servicing REGARDLESS of mileage is a just bad idea. Either get your car serviced yearly if you do average miles (10,000-12,000) OR twice a year if you do much more.
That’s how I’ve read it anyway.
Actually, in my case, my low mileage doesn't indicate short trips. It indicates that I live in London and commute by public transport most of the time. 
When I use the car it's more than likely that I'm driving at least 20 mins.
I would have imagined that the Audi computer would have taken account of the sort of trip lengths that are being made in order to calculate the best time for a service - ie given the same mileage I'd expect it to request servicing sooner on a car that made lots of short trips as opposed to fewer longs ones. Is that not the case?
It occurs to me that I can probably find the service info in the MMI, can't I? Damn, I'll have to get dressed now.
When I use the car it's more than likely that I'm driving at least 20 mins.I would have imagined that the Audi computer would have taken account of the sort of trip lengths that are being made in order to calculate the best time for a service - ie given the same mileage I'd expect it to request servicing sooner on a car that made lots of short trips as opposed to fewer longs ones. Is that not the case?
It occurs to me that I can probably find the service info in the MMI, can't I? Damn, I'll have to get dressed now.
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On variable, the calculated oil change date can extended. My last A3 went from 12 to 30 days to oil change. But the circumstances were unusual.
Listen to him, he doesn't have oil in his name for nothing!!!
I don't know if I'd take my own advice never mind make someone believe it hahaListen to him, he doesn't have oil in his name for nothing!!!
However imagine a car that was 2.5 years old and it had a problem and needed to go in for repairs. If the car had done 10k miles but only 1 service then I'd imagine Audi wouldn't be too willing to do work under warranty?
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Spot on, it happened to a mate of mines son, he had a VXR Corsa and the engine went bang! They refused to sort it out as he'd missed his service by about 2 months!!! Cost him about £4,000 for a recon engine....very expensive missed service!
RichardT
Registered User
But if you buy a new car and follow the mmi recommendations, they would probably have trouble saying it was your fault.
It’s only on this forum that I found out about the two servicing regimes - I got nothing from Audi when I bought the car. If I hadn’t been on here I would have followed the mmi, which is set by default to variable on new cars,
It’s only on this forum that I found out about the two servicing regimes - I got nothing from Audi when I bought the car. If I hadn’t been on here I would have followed the mmi, which is set by default to variable on new cars,
I went and checked what the MMI had to say about the service...
Next oil change in 13000 miles / 171 days
Next inspection in 10000 miles / 187 days
Next oil change in 13000 miles / 171 days
Next inspection in 10000 miles / 187 days
Well apparently the oil interval can change depending on the quality of the oil, there's a sensor for this (said someone at my Audi dealer). As for the "service" (inspection) well.. Yeah. Most people wouldn't know.
It does seem like servicing is a bit of a confusion spot. Especially when the Audi website starts using "inspection" while most people just talk about minor and major services.
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The MMI interval will change depending on the type of journey and how the car is driven. I don't believe that there is any type of oil quality sensor in the engine. What parameter would it measure?
Variable or extended servicing were to keep maintenance costs down for fleet managers. They offload the cars after ~3 years and before the issues associated with longer oil change / service intervals become evident.
Oils have improved over the last 20 years but I’d never leave longer than 12 months between oil changes.
Oils have improved over the last 20 years but I’d never leave longer than 12 months between oil changes.
Just consumption rate would give you quite a lot of info - high consumption reflects driving style and/or oil quality. More fancy types might sense metal contaminants getting through or building up on the filter, but that's a lot more complicated than estimating volume over time.
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I think we can safely say that these cars know how and log to some extent how they have been driven to calculate oil life.
How can it work out consumption rate when there is no oil level reading? (just a high and low oil level alarm to prompt you to dip the oil?) Even Audi say the engines can use up to 0.5 litres per 1000 km!
There is no oil quality sensor in any of the A/S3 engines.
