How long to your first service?

[Rob The Dog]

This realy is a bit of of nightmare! Honest John (who I rate highly for good advice) says it is lunatic to expect a new vehicle to survive no oil change (despite "long life oil") after 10000 miles. I'm going for compromise here - I intend to get an oil change service done at 12000 miles (but I do reasonably high mileages).

Don't forget guys, fully synthetic oil, most of it comes out of a science lab not out of the ground, and has been shown to have the ability to greatly exceed sevice intervals, I forget the exact details of the tests they did at the time it came out, but they ran a BMW K motorcycle engine ( basicly a small car engine on its side)on the same oil for somthing like 100,000 miles and then took it apart and found no significant ware on the cylinders, It all depends on your anual mileage when you change it,I prefer the advice of the VAG agents not a pundit, nice man he may be. my own vehicles run on longlife oil,20,000 miles between changes and have done for many yrs with no probs and no damage to the engines, and you would soon know if the rings, valves, or cylinders were failing through lack of oil changes, you would have excessive oil consumption and blue smoke......Simples.

[Yetiflute]

This realy is a bit of of nightmare! Honest John (who I rate highly for good advice) says it is lunatic to expect a new vehicle to survive no oil change (despite "long life oil") after 10000 miles. I'm going for compromise here - I intend to get an oil change service done at 12000 miles (but I do reasonably high mileages).

First let me state that I am a believer in frequent oil changes. However I remember reading something years ago way before the days of extended services. At that time (probably still now) there was an independent testing lab that would analyse oil for it's suitabilty to remain in the car sump. someone was running a car vast distances on Millers synthetic oil with no oil changes and was regularly sending oil samples for analysis. The results always came back giving a 100% ok for continued use of the oil. The car engine was eventually dismantled and showed no signs of wear. I think this was in the days when diesel engines were specified to need double the oil changes compared with petrol - 6000 instead of 12000. It is interesting that everybody now considers 10000 miles as a potential oil change point when in the old days it used to be 12000 miles. I suppose a similar situation to the metrication of the dozen :-)))

[fuzzybunny]

Don't forget guys, fully synthetic oil, most of it comes out of a science lab not out of the ground, and has been shown to have the ability to greatly exceed sevice intervals, I forget the exact details of the tests they did at the time it came out, but they ran a BMW K motorcycle engine ( basicly a small car engine on its side)on the same oil for somthing like 100,000 miles and then took it apart and found no significant ware on the cylinders, It all depends on your anual mileage when you change it,I prefer the advice of the VAG agents not a pundit, nice man he may be. my own vehicles run on longlife oil,20,000 miles between changes and have done for many yrs with no probs and no damage to the engines, and you would soon know if the rings, valves, or cylinders were failing through lack of oil changes, you would have excessive oil consumption and blue smoke......Simples.

Thanks for this Rob. I was getting concerned that my yeti had gone 17000 before its first service although the MFD indicated it was good for another 1800.

The dealers seems unconcerned expecting a max of 20,000. It just goes against the grain to wait so long, having been brought up on 10,000 service intervals. as you say though modern synthetics oils are way superior to the old mineral stuff dug out the ground.

Cheeers.