The "Sludge" TV Campaign

[Gary in Sandy Eggo]

For a year or so, I've been seeing a lot of commercials for engine oil yakking about "sludge." They appear to be associating it to high engine temperatures. Help me out here.

I thought sludge was a product of cold running temperatures and lots of contaminants. Cars usta have 165F thermostats and downdraft tubes to ventilate the crankcase (drawing in lots of dirt). Somewhere in the 1970s, engines were sealed to the outside and ventilated through the car's air filter. Thermostat temperatures were boosted to 195F to both increase combustion and thermal efficiency, and drive off moisture (one of the ingredients of sludge). At the high temperature end of things, oil would break down and leave "varnish" deposits on all surfaces, frequently causing valves to stick in their guides.

So, what's the deal with sludge? That's a problem that was solved more than 30 years ago. Help me out here if you've got any better intel.

 

[PT1]

There are a lot of Toyota owners who would disagree. there are many causes to sludge but a big one is a inoperative PCV system or one that is improperly designed as in the Toyota case. Plus there is always that guy who changes his oil every 20k whether it needs it or not........

 

[[RT] ProjUltraZ]

it seems to be related to engine design as some motors sludge up more than others with a variety of oil but any engine will sludge up if OCIs are too long

 

[artificialist]

Yeah, I hate Castrol's ad because ANY API SM oil will give great sludge protection when changed often enough.

 

[speedyswede]

Yea, it seems like all of them are jumpin' on the anti-sludge bandwagon. But with the recent press about sludge problems in some modern vehicles....can you really blame them for trying?

It's well documented that VW/Audi had heat-related sludging issues with their 1.8t engines. But IMO, when you look at some of the original 'free schedualed maintanence' plans(10k intervals on dino with a searing turbo??), they have no one but themselves to blame. Those maintanence plans did nothing more than generate a laxidasical attitude towards OCIs among their clients, especially those with leased vehicles. "Why shoud I pay to have my oil changed when VW/Audi will eventually do it for free?" But VWoA did manage to cover themselves in the fine print in the owners manual where they mentioned how OCIs should be more frequent under the all to common specified conditions.(How many casual car owners do you know that actually reads their owners manual cover to cover?) And they ultimately came to their senses when they made synthetic oil & 5k OCIs mandatory along with a slightly larger oil filter, but by that time the sludgy damage had already been done.

 

[Scout1]

My buddy has a supercharged Mini and he's on the dealers "free" maintenance... gets the oil changed every 10K miles. I've tried to coach him that if he wants to keep the car a long time, and he does, I would change it myself halfway through the dealer interval with that little supercharger.

Anybody know how hard those engines are on the oil? He claims the dealers is using synthetic, but he's not sure...

 

[PT1]

Free oil change and the dealer is using synthetic? I really doubt it......

 

[MCompact]

Originally Posted By: PT1
Free oil change and the dealer is using synthetic? I really doubt it......


Believe it; BMW and Mini specify a synthetic oil that meets their Longlife-01 standard in all of their newer cars. At the dealer that means a Castrol synthetic(TXT Softec) 5w30, except for M cars- which get Castrol 10W-60 TWS Synthetic.

 

[speedyswede]

Originally Posted By: PT1
Free oil change and the dealer is using synthetic? I really doubt it......


...and VW/Audi is also aligned w/Castrol...all 2005 & newer vehicles w/service contracts get Syntec 5W40 and sometimes TXT 505.01 5W40. Even GC 0W30 used to be available through VWoA.

 

[BennyL]

i can confirm that my local BMW dealers use Castrol Syntec 5w30 on all the newer cars.

 

[mbcoops]

Originally Posted By: Scout1
My buddy has a supercharged Mini and he's on the dealers "free" maintenance... gets the oil changed every 10K miles. I've tried to coach him that if he wants to keep the car a long time, and he does, I would change it myself halfway through the dealer interval with that little supercharger.

Anybody know how hard those engines are on the oil? He claims the dealers is using synthetic, but he's not sure...


I always noticed my 05 MCS burned more of the factory fill castrol. Now that it's all RL, it's better. The dealer is putting synthetic in there as far as their definition of synthetic goes - it's the castrol syntec 5-30. I've never done an UOA, so I don't technically know if the engine is hard on the oil or not.

mb

 

[Jethro]

Getting our last free oil change this weekend on our Cooper before the service warranty runs out. It's been exactly one year since it's last oil change, but we have only put about 8000 miles on it in that time. They wouldn't change it until one year or 15,000 miles had passed.