VW LONG LIFE OR SHORT LIFE SERVICE
 

I have a VW transporter 174ps and it is on the long life service, this means that it can go nearly 20k before an oil change, the short life service means it can go nearly 10k before a service.
So i am wondering is it a good idea to let it go 20k before an oil change cause that seems a little too long to me.
It would work out quite costly to change it to the short life service now.
So i was wondering if it would be a good idea to change the oil myself.
What do people think.

Changing your oil yourself is the way to go. I would imagine the filter should be easy to get at and depending on the amount of oil it needs it should not cost more than £20 all in. If you don't expect it to have much resale value when you are finished with it why pay extra for a stamp in the service book?

If you own the van and you intend to keep it a long time, change it every 10K yourself.

The "long-life" service thing is really only to keep servicing costs down for fleet managers and for people that have cars on the 3-year deals, where they give them back and get a new one.

If you need the special PD oil (505.01) you can get it cheap from a number of places, there's a thread about it from just a couple of days ago.

Diesel PD engined VAG cars go upto 30000 miles or two years without an oil change. :eek:
I used the Castrol SLX Long Life and it looks as thin as water putting it in.

The engine management is supposed to monitor warm up periods, engine usage, fuel used, etc. etc and flag up if the oil should be changed sooner.

To be honest I found it a bit of a con as the big service every two years costs a fortune, the Mondeo I have now has yearly servicing (Two minor then one major) but it works out cheaper over four years than two VAG services for the Octavia.

If you intend to keep it for years then I'd go for extra oil changes, if you are only keeping it a few years I wouldn't bother.

Cheers
Lee

I do intend to keep the van for a few years so i think i will change the oil.
Does anyone know were the oil filter is on this vans i have had a quick look but nothing seems to look like an oil filter.
Thanks for all the help
Karl.