Rotella T6 turned into jelly

You state your father is 80 years old. How is his mental condition. No offence intended with this question. My fathers mental condition deteriorated at that age and he would try to add chemicals to the car in places it did not belong. I sincerely hope this is not what is happening in your case. It was very sad to watch my dad go downhill.
 
Right but that specific engine has had reports of design or operational issues that cause problems which no oil can fix.
The "Mechanic In A Bottle" doesn't exist. Trying to prevent wear long term is one thing. Messing up an engine or neglecting it for years and then trying a miracle fix in a bottle doesn't work either. Once in a while I see folks at Walmart buying all sorts of additives to bandaid their beater. No matter how many times you say it, oil and "quick fix" additives don't work to fix design flaws or neglect.
 
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I'm calling ********. I've been around too many engines in my life to believe this crap. There is no way in the world this was caused by Rotella T6 or any other oil and proper maintenance. This post is ********.
I don’t beleive Rotella caused this, Ive been running Rotella in various applications for years and never had anything like this happen. Based on much of what I’ve gathered so far, it was probably the DPF clogging that caused this to happen. An analysis of the sludge will be sent to Shell which will ultimately provide an answer.
 
I don’t beleive Rotella caused this, Ive been running Rotella in various applications for years and never had anything like this happen. Based on much of what I’ve gathered so far, it was probably the DPF clogging that caused this to happen. An analysis of the sludge will be sent to Shell which will ultimately provide an answer.


I hope that when you get the results of that analysis you will post them here. There are a lot of us who are interested to find out what happened here.
 
Looks very oxidized and may have been contaminated with either vegetable oil or some type of glycol.
Hey guys, my father has a 2013 TDI golf with approx 324000km(201324 miles). Oil used in the car is Rotella T6 and oil changes have been completed every time the counter in the car indicates the vehicle is due. Recently he ran into a no start situation which was diagnosed as a clogged DPF by VW. The DPF was changed under warranty at the dealer and when the tech started the car he claimed that the oil light came on so he checked the oil and found it was down roughy 2 quarts. Tech decided it would be better to just change the oil completely. So tech pulls the oil plug and oil leaves the pan very slowly, and is stating he believes the engine is heavily sludged up and wants to pull the oil pan for further inspection. It’s at this point that I instruct my Dad to have the car towed to my place as this wasn’t adding up, I performed the last oil change on the car and noticed no issue at all with the oil draining. So car comes to my place and I pull the oil pan off and find massive amounts of this jelly sludge. It has a rubbery texture and breaks apart fairly easily in your hands. I was able to clean out the oil pan fairly easily as it doesn’t appear to stick to aluminum very well, the windage tray and oil pickup(plastic) however is a different story. I’m currently soaking these parts in varsol, which has helped with loosening the deposits however deposits do no appear to be dissolving, rather it looks like a bunch of permatex silicon floating around in the varsol. In doing some google searches I saw that coolant in the oil can cause this sort of thing, however we haven’t had to add any coolant to the car. Car had some front end work completed a couple of months ago, I’m concerned someone may have sabotaged his engine figuring him has an easy target(he’s 80 years old) . Would love any and all feedback!! Thanks!!
Was this a dealer tech? If so, why not let the dealer tech find this problem? You have basically modified the evidential findings so any claims could now be in dispute.
 
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....deteriorated at that age and he would try to add chemicals to the car in places it did not belong....
While leaving the neighborhood one morning for work, my neighbor flagged me down. For some reason she felt compelled to check under the hood of her late model company car. She filled her engine up to the filler cap with WATER before realizing what she had done.

Scott
 
You state your father is 80 years old. How is his mental condition. No offence intended with this question. My fathers mental condition deteriorated at that age and he would try to add chemicals to the car in places it did not belong. I sincerely hope this is not what is happening in your case. It was very sad to watch my dad go downhill.
You state your father is 80 years old. How is his mental condition. No offence intended with this question. My fathers mental condition deteriorated at that age and he would try to add chemicals to the car in places it did not belong. I sincerely hope this is not what is happening in your case. It was very sad to watch my dad go downhill.
He still has his Witt’s about him, he doesn’t do anything under the hood. He will usually ask myself or a shop/dealer to do it for him(even for Windshield washer fluid), which was why I was worried about possible sabotage.
 
I can’t even imagine how the motor even ran with that in it
It ran with what little was left, spiked a temp, evaporated the rest, and then seized.

What you see in the pan is a result of the process that we call, "polymerization." In other words, it kept agglomerating the higher molecular weight hydrocarbons (the lighter weight components had already been boiled off) and then turned into "goo" or hydrocarbon sludge.

@durtydiesel: Was this a dealer tech that identified the low oil level and the slow draining of the oil? If so, why not let the dealer tech find this problem?

You have modified the evidential findings so any claims could now be in dispute.


And why rush to a judgement of sabatoge before you had any data?
 
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I hope I never have to experience this.

Proactive maintenance with oil and filter changes at the Severe Service intervals works well.
 
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I don’t have much experience with VW diesels. But I have seen a handful of Cummins engines come into our shop with this issue, both CNG and Diesel. So far the root cause has been coolant contamination from a blown head gasket each time. But what turned it into jelly was that the engines were ran for longer than normal with that contamination. From either misdiagnosis or the customer not paying noticing the coolant loss.

We’ve had trucks come in with DPF’s so plugged they wouldn’t even start anymore. Vehicles that has DPF issues usually have the opposite oil problem. Their oil is usually thinned out from excessive fuel contamination due to having to frequently regenerate.

Again I’m not too familiar with the VW engine design, but this has been my experience.
 
These pictures are from a school bus that came in in April I think for low oil pressure. They stated several times that the oil level was fine each time they checked it. We went to drain the oil and hardly anything came out. Turns out that the customer’s techs noticed the coolant loss, but had replaced the egr cooler without properly leak testing it. I can’t remember how many miles they ran it after that. But yeah it wasn’t the egr cooler, the root cause was a bad head gasket.
 

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It ran with what little was left, spiked a temp, evaporated the rest, and then seized.

What you see in the pan is a result of the process that we call, "polymerization." In other words, it kept agglomerating the higher molecular weight hydrocarbons (the lighter weight components had already been boiled off) and then turned into "goo" or hydrocarbon sludge.

@durtydiesel: Was this a dealer tech that identified the low oil level and the slow draining of the oil? If so, why not let the dealer tech find this problem?

You have modified the evidential findings so any claims could now be in dispute.


And why rush to a judgement of sabatoge before you had any data?
The engine isn’t seized, car stopped from a clogged DPF before the oil fully gelled. The matter was escalated to VW Canada, and their response basically was they don’t warranty any engines which have sludge in them, they consider this a maintenance issue not a result of a clogged DPF.

I wouldn’t say I was rushing to the judgement of sabotage, I was expressing concern, because I was the last person to change the oil and there was absolutely no evidence of this sludge anywhere in waste oil or oil filter.
 
I’m surprised the car still had a warranty and that the DPF was changed under warranty even though the incorrect oil was used. This is beside the point though.

I agree with the above. Something doesn’t add up. It was very low and it sludged up.
 
These pictures are from a school bus that came in in April I think for low oil pressure. They stated several times that the oil level was fine each time they checked it. We went to drain the oil and hardly anything came out. Turns out that the customer’s techs noticed the coolant loss, but had replaced the egr cooler without properly leak testing it. I can’t remember how many miles they ran it after that. But yeah it wasn’t the egr cooler, the root cause was a bad head gasket.
Wow
 
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