Hi,

I bought a low mileage (<20k) '55 Octavia TDCi in October 2008 and have done just over 8000 miles since then. The engine oil light came on the other day warning of low oil so I topped it up (near as I can tell I added about 1 litre). Is 1L in 8000 miles typical - the chap at the motor factors said they use oil but that seems excessive to me. I've not had to top up a car between services for a long time now (the last one that used oil was a Bedford HA110 van in 1988) and modern cars have always seemed more oil tight. The car was dealer serviced before I bought it but I don't know how full it was.

I topped it up with synthetic oil and asked about the service interval. The manual says long service and I believe the car will tell me when it needs the oil changing but the chap in the shop said 10k to be safe what does everybody else do ?

Regards,

Dave

It's not unusual (cue Tom Jones) to use a spot of oil up to about 10/12k miles - after that consumption reduces dramatically - in my case down to almost zero (1.9PD 56k miles).

With regard to oil .... if you topped up with oil meeting VW spec 507.00 then there's no problem with carrying on until the service indicator "spanner" appears (could be 18k miles +). On the other hand (and this is IMPORTANT!), if you didn't use the correct spec oil then you should revert to the 10k service interval at which time you can fill with the 507.00 stuff and go back to variable.

Hope that helps,

Dave