wrong oil kills DPF?

[brad]

Had a tradie at my place yesterday with a 2008 Golf GT 125tdi.

He reckons he had his car serviced last year by one of the generic franchised service companies & he reckons they put the wrong oil in it which a couple of months later made the engine throw a CEL & subsequently has killed the DPF, made the DSG shift funny & it chews through diesel like there's no tommorrow (450km per tank).

He subsequently went to an independant VW specialist (no idea how long this took) and had the oil changed but the car is still crook. He asked for an oil sample to be taken but the specialist "forgot".

Do these symptoms sound kosher for a one-off use of the wrong oil (lets assume they used 10w-30 synth instead of 507.00)??

[Transporter]

The low saps oils have 1/2 or even less of the saps content of the std oils. I don't think that once of would kill the healthy DPF. The croocked one? Yes.

[brad]

So it might just help accelerate the process but isn't fatal within itself.

I think his alarm bells should have gone off when the service place reckoned they were having trouble getting oil.

[Transporter]

So it might just help accelerate the process but isn't fatal within itself.

I think his alarm bells should have gone off when the service place reckoned they were having trouble getting oil.

...or when (if) he noticed that the car was regenerating more often than usual, which explains a bad fuel economy.

[brad]

The vehicle sounds like it was good but is suffering from lack of knowledge by both the owner & the service centre(s) he attends.

He thought he might have some recourse against the franchised service centre but what can he prove?

I told him to move on, pay the $2k-$3k it will cost to get it put right by a good independant specialist & enjoy the car rather than driving a heap of crap that has so many lights flashing on the dash that you think your in a disco.

I don't think he's even had a scan for error codes.

[Idle]

Don't think it would be the DPF doing that, and a non-507 oil for only one change isn't likely to have triggered a DPF problem unless it was already on the thin edge.

The model is known for other problems with the injection system and it would probably pay to have the vehicle checked out by a competent VW service.

[brad]

He did go to one of the better known VW specialists around here afterwards. He didn't sound particularly happy about them.

I actually think that his experience with VW is typical of the non-enthusiast user that (probably) make up the bulk of VW sales. In love at the start; thinks that they can save a few dollars on servicing & then totally disillusioned.