. Ive got my 500 miles till service warning coming up , so plan to spend a day next weekend giving her a good servicing:P.I plan to change the oil, and filter (from Opie oils as they are literally 200 yds away) the rear brake shoes and the arb bushes. There are a couple of things im not sure on such as -are the shoes easy to fit?--and am i using the correct grade of oil? I was given 5w 30 fully synthetic oil last time i was there and the car seems to run fine with no top up necessary between 10 000 mile services.I have a haynes manual for the jobs and like to do all my own servicing as i know its been done right . My car is a 2002 octavia 1.9 tdi (90 bhp) . Thanks in advance.- Dave

You should use oil which says to vw spec 505.01 ideally. However it's common to use semi or fully synth 10/40 turbo diesel oil if changing it regularly. Your choice really. The 5/30 fully synth I suspect was longlife 507.00, which is also fine though I would stick with 10k intervals.

You need to do a lot more than the items you mentioned to comprise a major service, but changing the oil is always good.

Greg.

. Ive got my 500 miles till service warning coming up , so plan to spend a day next weekend giving her a good servicing:P.I plan to change the oil, and filter (from Opie oils as they are literally 200 yds away) the rear brake shoes and the arb bushes. There are a couple of things im not sure on such as -are the shoes easy to fit?--and am i using the correct grade of oil? I was given 5w 30 fully synthetic oil last time i was there and the car seems to run fine with no top up necessary between 10 000 mile services.I have a haynes manual for the jobs and like to do all my own servicing as i know its been done right . My car is a 2002 octavia 1.9 tdi (90 bhp) . Thanks in advance.- Dave