Reply With QuoteIf you are uncomfortable with the colour of the oil or change intervals, then change the oil. It is cheap insurance, especially if you do it yourself and want to keep it past 200,000kms.
Volkswagen Enthusiast
I know you can't judge diesel oil by its colour but for me it's v hard when your previous LPG car never visually fouled its oil
Volkswagen Fan
If you are uncomfortable with the colour of the oil or change intervals, then change the oil. It is cheap insurance, especially if you do it yourself and want to keep it past 200,000kms.
Volkswagen Fanatic
One of the well known by-products of diesel combustion is soot.
Lubricants designed to be used (but not exclusively) in diesel engines are formulated to hold soot in suspension and prevent it from agglomerating. It is this characteristic which causes the lubricant to turn black as it rapidly circulates throughout the engine, as well as mixing with some left over lubricant from the previous oil change.
Based on that metric alone, the engine oil in a diesel engine would either need to be changed monthly, fortnightly, weekly, or even daily (depending on the engine itself).
Such a maintenance regime would almost certainly result in a considerable loss of time, money and resources, with no change or no gain in vehicle service life.
Based on the driving conditions described, I remain confident that an oil change interval of 15 000 km for this vehicle will provide an excellent cost/benefit ratio and a long service life, with regards to the engine (I do not make the same claim for any auxiliary or electrical components, which tend to fail or disable the vehicle much sooner than actual engine wear).
If and when the vehicle is eventually taken out of service, I find it unlikely it will be due to engine failure from excessive wear caused by insufficient lubrication (aside from operator error, such as insufficient volume/top-ups or the use of an inappropriate product).
Dub Crazy
I was on 15k changes (about 9 month intervals) until 60k. I had UOA done and the oil tested like new. I also had 20L of oil sitting on the shelf so I started doing 7500km changes because it was cheap to add an OEM filter to the stockpiled oil & DIY the change.Originally Posted by Ryeman
If you can DIY & it makes you feel good then I'd do the change.
If you're paying labour for the change then why not pull your intervals back to 10,000km or 12500km. I'm sure the dealer won't object.
Keep in mind you are probably only doing 14500km between services anyway as the odometers aren't as accurate as they could be.
carandimage The place where Off-Topic is On-Topic
I used to think I was anal-retentive until I started getting involved in car forums
Volkswagen Fan
Quote "as well as mixing with some left over lubricant from the previous oil change." One way to minimise this is to get more oil out. I found by putting a sucker tube down through the filter body into the oil cooler you can get out about 300ml more oil out.
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VWwA Super Moderator
When you pull out the dipstick, just feel the oil between your fingers, if you can feel the grit, then it's definitely time for an oil change, at least in the engines I maintain. The colour of the oil means nothing, the oil can get black as soon as you start up after the oil change.
Using engine flush before you change the oil helps with that and it also helps the DPF if your car has one.
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Volkswagen Enthusiast
If I could feel grit it would be far too late even as a trade-in.
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Dubber
What product do you use for engine flush? Does it need to be diesel specific?
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