Hi all! It's that time of year again and the Felicia is off for her new exhaust box (the tin-foil won't last much longer!) and MOT tomorrow. I did ask the garage if they would do an oil and filter but they wanted £49.95 because 'we can only use the super-dooper long-life new Skoda oil'. I've looked at the service book and online but frankly it's not that clear. I'm no stranger to oil grades as I work with motorcycle parts but I can't seem to make sense of the service book...

Petrol engines list A - Multigrade high-lubricity, spec VW 500 00. If I search under this grade I get a choice of 10/40 semi-synth, 10/40 full synth, 5/40 full synth, 5/30 sull synth

Petrol engines list B - Spec VW 501 01. With this one I get castrol Magnatech 10/40 Part Synthetic or 15/40 Universal All-Season.

Petrol Engines list B - Spec VW 502.00. With this one I get 0W/30 or W/40 full synth.

Personally I don't think a fully synthetic is necessary and I'm currently thinking a 10/40 semi or the Magnatech. The engine is a 2000 1.3 (54bhp) with 40,000. It has been 12 months since the last change and the garage charged £24.00 last time so that definitely wasn't the long-life new stuff.

Any recommendations???

Thanks guys!

Edited 16 January, 201115 yr by Allicia8

I have used 10/40 in my rally car for years, it gets a LOT of abuse and it's been fine on that. I used to use Magnatec, but I've heard dodgy reports about it (although I didn't have problems with it myself). Go for a reasonable 10/40 and it'll be fine.

10W/40 semi-synth should be fine. Expensive high-tech stuff would be wasted on an engine design which is essentially a mid-'80s head on an early '60s block - to be honest if you used the cheapest supermarket oil you could find and changed it every couple of months it would probably do more good (and still be cheaper) than a year on £10/litre fancy oil.

I think with the later Felicia engines VW basically changed things like the spark plugs and oil specs in an attempt to bring the service intervals into line with the rest of the range, but the Skoda engine is still generally best-off being treated like the antique* it is and serviced more frequently.

*to be fair, it was pretty advanced in 1964

another vote for 10/40 semi from me too