Date:         Tue, 8 Feb 2000 10:28:45 -0500
Reply-To:     Dominique Cormann <kozmik@HOME.COM>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Dominique Cormann <kozmik@HOME.COM>
Subject:      Re: Engine oil change interval (VW content...)
Comments: To: Southard Family <southard@gis.net>
In-Reply-To:  <01BF71FF.AE3E9780.southard@gis.net>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII

On Tue, 8 Feb 2000 06:42:19 -0500
Southard Family <southard@gis.net> wrote:

> On Monday, February 07, 2000 11:12 PM, Dominique Cormann
> [SMTP:kozmik@home.com] wrote:
> > AFAIK, your manual should state that the correct oil is an oil that
> > qualifies with at least one of the following:
> > B3
> > VW 505
> > CF-4, CG-4
> > It doesn't have to meet all of the specs, just at least one of them.
>
> Right you are!  I should have checked my manual before replying.
>
> It's interesting that VW is instructing dealers to use the synthetic oil
> for the free maintenance oil changes, instead of the presumably cheaper
> dino oil.  See http://tech.vw.com/pdf/V99-05TDIsyn_.PDF  (you need Adobe
> Acrobat Reader to view this.)

Actually its not that hard to understand once you examine some details.

They need one oil that they can offer to all the dealerships...all the
way south to all the way north. They want only one viscousity. They want
to keep things simple since the US dealers are completely stupid when it
comes to diesels, since some of them have not even touched one before!

Right now in north america, the oils availible to VW that meet VW 505,
or B3, are only synthetics. They could have chosen a dino based CG-4
oil, but then they couldn't use the same viscousity year round and in
all regions. So its back to a synthetic.

In europe this rule does NOT exist. The dealers have a conventional
viscousity vs temp chart ( I had a fellow Freds TDI forum send me some
scans of his manual ), so in europe they use different oils in diesels,
but that meet the same specs, but they are not limited to synthetics.
So you can use a dino based diesel oil like chevron delo 400, but you
will have to use the appropirate viscousity for the season/region, they
just couldn't trust all the US dealers to wrap their brains around such
a complicated question ( heavy sarcasm yes, but its the truth ). They
use the same drain times too regardless of synthetic vs non synthetic
use. Just as long as it meets the specs listed:

B3
VW 505
CF-4, or CG-4

--
============================================================---------
Dominique Cormann                              Email: kozmik@home.com
Homepage: http://kozmik.guelph.on.ca
Diesel page: http://kozmik.guelph.on.ca/gtdproject
84 Rabbit D - daily driver
84 Rabbit GTD - work'in on it