[s-cars] 0w-40 for S6?

[George]

Taka,

as far as I remember (this is about 12 years - old man memory is the second
thing to go ...), I did not like the sound engine made during cold idle
(lifter tapping ?) and for some reason that time the oil consumption was
unusually up when this oil was used so I went back to Castrol. Did not do
any scientific research, after all I've used Castrol before in 4Runner and
got about 280k miles on it with no engine problem ....

I do not say that Mobil 1 is a bad oil - at all. I just used Castrol Synthec
5w50. 


With my Avant few years later when I moved I switched to Sunoco 5w50 full
synthetic oil based on recommendation from someone who managed fleet of
police cars (second reason was that we could get Sunoco by 20 gallon barrel
and it was substantially cheaper than Castrol which was not available like
that). This car is still running well with no engine problems.  Oil
temperature would get up to 130 C with extended run on bahn with sustained
speeds about 120 mph.

 Castrol in Europe (and pretty much any other oil for that matter) is very
expensive - the RS10W60 retails for approx. $35 per liter - yep, per ONE
liter .... but Shell is at the same league and so are the others.  Price
includes 19% VAT tax but even taking that off it is still expensive.

Factory specifies 5W40 VW 505.01 spec oil for RS6 - interestingly enough
this is specifically diesel oil - so you can imagine no service reads the
manual and they always try to put "long life" instead and will argue to
death that diesel oil does not belong to that engine - until you pull out
the manual .....




-----Original Message-----
From: s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com
[mailto:s-car-list-bounces at audifans.com] On Behalf Of Taka Mizutani
Sent: Saturday, August 06, 2005 18:45
To: g.grubr at connectel-us.com
Cc: s-car-list at audifans.com
Subject: Re: [s-cars] 0w-40 for S6?

George-
Can you elaborate on why you didn't like Mobil 1 in your S4?

I've used Mobil 1 10W30 and 15W50 in both of my I-5 cars in the past without
any issues. I used Castrol Syntec 5W50 in the 200 and had very loud lifter
tapping on cold starts, went back to Mobil 1 and had no such issues. As
such, I've preferred to use Mobil 1 in the I-5 cars- very little oil
consumption as well.

As a counterpoint, our '01 New Beetle 2.0 had massive oil consumption issues
at came to a head at about 30k miles- engine was replaced.
Prior to engine replacement, I found that Castrol Syntec 10W30 resulted in
less oil consumption than Mobil 1 10W30- I have no idea why this was the
case. After engine replacement, I've run both Syntec and Mobil 1 in the
engine with close to zero oil consumption on a 5k replacement interval. I
always run 10W30 in the car, although my mechanic tends to put in 5W50 (last
oil change was not called for, he did it anyway, ended up with a free oil
change).

I'm running Mobil 1 10W30 in both our '04 Volvo V70R and '04 Subaru STi and
no issues there, either. Curiously, the Volvo's oil filler cap says to use
Castrol oil. According to the dealer, it is not an issue to run other oils-
it is not a case like the BMW E39 M5, where a special Castrol RS 10W60 oil
was specified. That's what the dealer said, I don't know what the official
Volvo line is.

There are a lot of oils that we can't get in the US- Castrol RS 10W60 is
available only at the BMW dealer unless things have changed. Same thing with
Mobil 1 0W40- for the longest time, you could only get it from the MBZ
dealer, then Autozone started carrying it, now I think you can get it in
quite a few places. I had to buy 5 cases at a time at the Mobil distributor
in order to avoid $8/qt. at the MBZ dealer.

Personally, I don't think 0W40 is warranted in the I-5 Audis, although Steve
Bednarski reported to me that he had very good luck with 0W40 in his
numerous '91 200q20vs.

I have not noticed a difference in operating temperature, although I would
not use a light oil in the summertime if you're going to heavily tax the
car- I saw oil temps of 150C at Summit Point a few years ago in 98F weather.
That was scary. If I kept the 200 and continued to do a lot of track events,
I would have installed a much larger and better oil cooler as well as an
Accusump.

Taka
looking for a new track capable beater car
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