john banks

My wife's 2006 GTI did 14500 miles before the first service (some short journeys), now it is flashing up service in 2800 miles or 17 days and it is on 22200 miles which would take it to 25000 miles (or about 1 year and a week 10500 miles the last service). The service book says they put longlife in last time, and if they had not reset the indicator correctly it would have scheduled a service at 24500 and 1 year exactly I believe. Tempted to put normal oil rather than longlife and just go for 1 year/10000 mile fixed intervals with the short journeys she does to work (only a few miles although it gets a better run at least once a week). Thoughts?

gingerboy

By the sounds of it John utilising the "Longlife" service option is maybe overkill based on your wifes annual mileage.

I know when I had a 2.0tdi Passat it also was on longlife and the best I ever got was 17,500 between services. Worst was around 14,000 miles. As I understand it and you are no doubt aware the car / ecu calculates the service interval when using the Longlife schedule dependant on driving style, load, length of of journey etc.

I think unless your wife is doing 20,000 + miles per year longlife is possibly overkill and potentially it is worth investigating what the cost differential is if you were to switch to a "normal" service schedule. I'm not sure if the engine oil specification is the only difference or not so certainly worth looking in to!

Good luck

Paul

brickboy

Agree with GB, I ran my Passat 130 Tdi company car for 65K on 10K service intervals with no probs, and I believe it worked out cheaper than longlife would've, the 10 / 30 / 50 services are literally just an oil drop and a checkover.

mattbeef

The oil is a minimum of 10k in there anyway and if would need changing then it would let you know anyway as mine does and i have the 1.8 turbo


Long life oil is expensive but worth it IMO and i dont do that much mileage wise

stilover

My old man had his V8 RS4 for 2 years. It never flashed up once saying it needed a service.

Didn't put a many miles on it, but those miles were very fast one's

john banks

The local dealer only do variable servicing they tell me. Obviously they only want to sell expensive oil.

lozgti

I qiute enjoyed only having to go to the garage once every 2 years with my Octavia vRS.

Better than the bad old days of going twice a year in certain cars I owned!

RJM25R

iTrader: (1)

I work at VW main dealers, and we always use long life oil, even on (10k)time and distance servicing.

Really, if you're driving less than 15,000 miles we always recommend service every 12 months or 10,000 miles. Bear in mind that variable (long life) servicing was developed for high mileage (20k+ per year) drivers to minimise time in the wokshop to once a year instead of twice a year.

If you did 5,000 miles a year, it could be over 2 years until the indicator comes on. This could potentially lead to warranty issues because you are allowed 1000 miles/1 months grace for the service. It says in the manual that if the indicator hasn't come on, you should have the car serviced at 24 months regardless of mileage. If you were a low mileage user who doesn't read the manual (thats over 50% of my custom, folks!) time and distance is what i'd recommend!

PS I work in sales not service so I have nothing to gain by selling long life oil or servicing!

RJM25R

iTrader: (1)

HHmmmm, can't be true.... You can't do variable on the fox, it's time and distance only. . . .

Go to another dealer is my advice, or speak to service manager at your local dealer.

brickboy

The VW main dealer I used to get the Passat serviced at only used 505.01 oil for 10K services, it will vary dealer to dealer

john banks

Now at 22500 miles it says service now... 8000 miles after the last service which had longlife. I am puzzled.

Turbo2

I remember my previous 2005 (new model) Passat TDi 140 flashed up (first) "Service in 8000 miles". A few days and a couple of 100 miles later it flashed up "Service in 6000 miles". A few days after that and less than 100 miles later, it flashed up "Service in 5000 miles". And, you guessed it, a few days and negligible mileage later: "Service Now"!

There was nothing wrong with the car. I just think these cars are linked into the VW Accounts Dept computer: when cashflow at VAG UK is a little short, they call all these so-called "long-life" cars in for servicing! I'll be interested to see how my new car compares.

skinters

Are these monster miles between services really not having adverse effects?

I am used to changing synthetic every 6k-9k miles absolute max (petrol turbo). The oil at 22k must be utterly wasted on a turbo car and greatly increased the chances of failure in later life?

I am sure a Vag beancounter has done the "increased sales due to cheaper services" VS "increased chance of failure during VAG warranty" calculation though....

RJM25R

iTrader: (1)

It works by measuring the quality of the oil, so it's not inconceivable for the service indicator to change quickly if the oil has degraded quickly.

As I mentioned earlier, you're better off on time/distance servicing