Audi Q7 TDI oil change

[ccdhowell]

I changed the oil last night in my wife's '10 Q7 TDI. The oil was Amsoil European Formula 5w30. It had 7,700 miles on it and was the blackest, most soot filled oil I've ever seen.( my '07 6.0L PSD isn't nearly as bad.) It felt sort of silky to the touch, very strange. I took a sample and will report back when I get the analysis. I know Audi says you can run 10K miles on these engines between oil changes, but I'm not getting a warm fuzzy feeling after only 7,700 miles. After a little research I decided to put Castrol EDGE Professional LL03 5W30 in this time. It seems that Castrol worked hand-in-hand with the engineers at VAG when they were developing the new TDI engines. The oil was formulated to overcome some issues specific to these engines. Or is could be that I've succumb to marketing fluff. The icing on the cake is that it is VAG approved and Amsoil isn't.

What say you?

 

[dparm]

I agree that the 10k intervals are pretty hard to run unless you are really really easy on the oil. My S4 had destroyed the dealer's Castrol Edge 5w40 by 5k.

 

[blank1]

i think it is perfectly normal for diesel oil to get "black" even after 1000 miles...Imagine after 7,700 miles..

 

[dparm]

Originally Posted By: blank1
i think it is perfectly normal for diesel oil to get "black" even after 1000 miles...Imagine after 7,700 miles..


Agree, oil turns dark with use. Visual inspection is not that useful unless it is getting milky from coolant contamination or something.

 

[ccdhowell]

Yep, oil gets dark, and I'm accustomed to seeing that, but this oil was beyond normal dark. It stained my drain pan. I eagerly await my UOA results.

Any comments on the Castrol EDGE Professional LL03 5W30?
Good, bad, or otherwise?

 

[UG_Passat]

on my old 02 Golf TDI... as soon as the oil circulated in the engine, it becomes pitch black... this was started with a nice golden Delvac 1 5w40 back in the day....

 

[m6pwr]

Try the TDI forum: http://forums.tdiclub.com/. It's a vw forum but same tdi engine as yours. Over 190 pages of uoa's. Start from the last page and work backward for the latest tdi versions. You'll see that the euro tdi owners run their oil (same engine, same oil) at factory specified 18k oci. And many of those tdi engines have very high miles on them, well over 100k.

I believe VAG specs 10k oci's here simply because we've been weaned on the myth of the 3k oci. Surf some on the tdi forum and you will see that owners that do oci's less than 10k on their tdi are regarded as unlearned rustics.

And yes, there was a power point presentation by Lubrizol that told how VAG/Castrol spent years and millions of dollars developing the VW 507 Castrol oil.

 

[ccdhowell]

Originally Posted By: m6pwr
Try the TDI forum: http://forums.tdiclub.com/. It's a vw forum but same tdi engine as yours. Over 190 pages of uoa's. Start from the last page and work backward for the latest tdi versions. You'll see that the euro tdi owners run their oil (same engine, same oil) at factory specified 18k oci. And many of those tdi engines have very high miles on them, well over 100k.

I believe VAG specs 10k oci's here simply because we've been weaned on the myth of the 3k oci. Surf some on the tdi forum and you will see that owners that do oci's less than 10k on their tdi are regarded as unlearned rustics.

And yes, there was a power point presentation by Lubrizol that told how VAG/Castrol spent years and millions of dollars developing the VW 507 Castrol oil.


Nice info on the link, thanks. I checked out a few of the UOAs; it's remarkable to me that ZDDP is so low. I know why, but still....

"Unlearned rustics" that's funny, I've been called many things that I'm not, but that one may be spot on LOL.

 

[Kuato]

The UOA will be interesting when it comes back. Can you post at least the link to it here?

 

[ccdhowell]

Originally Posted By: Kuato
The UOA will be interesting when it comes back. Can you post at least the link to it here?


Will do.

 

[lars11]

Still, several audi engines suffer breakdowns here, cam chains, etc and the general assumption is that severe service and 30k km OCI kills the engines. 30k is a lot under mild circumstances but seem to work, but severe and 30k... Nope.

 

[ccdhowell]

Posted my UOA in the diesel section below, take a look. Insolubles weren't too bad, but Blackstone suggested I go for a 5,000 mile OCI this next run. Previous run was 7,700 miles.