1.8T sludge poll

[Taka Mizutani]

Chris-
What the service advisor said is all fine and good, but the concerns
you have over the 1.8T engine are blown way out of proportion. The
cars are just fine- simply run synthetic in them from now on, change
oil at least every 5k with synthetic (I prefer Mobil 1 0W40 in the
black cap).

When I used synthetic first in my 200, I got really black oil for the
first few changes, then the oil came out much cleaner as long as I
kept the intervals around 4k. I think you'll remove a lot of crud
simply by using a better quality oil- maybe they have a better
additive mix?

On a side note, our old A4 had zero sludge, little bit of varnish on a
50k mile engine, ran with synthetic from the second oil change onward.
I will continue to idle down any of the turbo cars I own after running
them hard- that tiny little K03 can get red hot pretty easily and
letting the engine run for about 90s and going easy the last few miles
before shutting down really helps it cool down.

Taka