Originally Posted by oil_film_movies
Originally Posted by jcartwright99
Need some oil and filter recommendations to
help a friend out. He's got a 2011 A4 2.0 turbo with 30,000 miles. I would say that 80% of his driving is short 10-20 minutes drives of city driving. I am little nervous to make recommendations because of what I've seen about these engines and sludge. Not sure if that is his engine or not. He's not a car guy and has pretty much neglected this other than his 3 year maintenance package that he bought new with the car. With my limited oil knowledge,thinking PP (to keep things clean) and no longer than 5k or 1 year OCI. Any thoughts or suggestions is appreciated.
Since this is for a friend, and that friend may blame your choice of oil if something happens to that aging engine, you must show him this:
A handy reference is
https://mobiloil.com/en/product-selector
"your vehicle
manufacturer recommends a 0W-30, 0W-40, 5W-30 or 5W-40 viscosity and oil that meets
VW 502 00. Your engine oil capacity is approximately
4.9 quarts. We offer these motor oils to help protect your vehicle. The recommended oil filter is M1-404 or M1-404A." --- using a VW 502 oil means you can't be blamed for an engine failure.
That's a nice engine, only 30k miles, so it might be worth it to make sure.
.... which is also what it says in Audi's owner's manual.
Although, choice of oil filter can be any brand, since these cartridge oil filters are very good no matter what brand you get. Walmart has the best prices (sometimes Amazon or RockAuto.com or fcpeuro.com) on VW 502 oil (any
0w40 you see on the shelf at walmart, such as Mobil1 0w40 or black-jug Castrol Edge 0w40). 5quart jug size is perfect for this 4.9 quart capacity.
You could also choose any oil that is VW 502 from
https://www.audiusa.com/content/dam...Technical-Service-Bulletin-1.22.2018.pdf if you want to, but Mobil1 or Castrol Edge 5-qt jugs are probably best here, are both 502.
If you decide to get fancy, if it was my car, I'd put in Mobil1 ESP 5w30 (HTHS 3.5 and many German specs met, VW 504 too), which could help keep the intake valves cleaner.
One point to remember is that the VW oil performance specs (502, 504, etc.) are among the toughest around, so following that is a good idea.
This is good stuff. I'll make him get the Mobil1 ESP 5w30 and probably go with Fram. I'm a little worried about the sludge issue on this engine but 5k OCI with good stuff is really all you can do other than replace tube that gets clogged or get something else. It's a manual and the car has been pretty good to him. I doubt he wants to get a car payment for another car that he will barely drive.