Variable service intervals and oil - 02 Golf TDI 100PD

**Vartan Narinian** · July 17th 03, 08:09 PM posted to uk.rec.cars.vw.watercooled

(anthony james) writes:

- the principle of servicing based on need rather than time/mileage
seems sound but what happens about other maintenance? I know
remarkably little about cars and i'd always thought the 'annual'
service covered off things like brake pads and anything else that
might need changing.

Cars nowadays need very little maintenance. A 'service' is just an
expensive oil change. Brake pads and such are replaced as and when
necessary. Supposedly, VW will contact you for important things like
cambelt changes etc.

With a service perhaps only every 2 years do i
need to keep an eye on these myself or does the car have sensors for
everything? Other than Water,oil, lights, tyres what do i need to
worry about?

Nothing much really. Late Golfs have sensors for coolant levels, oil
levels and everything else.

- Oil type. The low oil indicator light came on the other day which
rather concerned the wife. the manual didnt make a lot of sense (see*
below) so we topped it up with maybe a quarter of a litre of oil left
over from the service of a BMW 328.

Castol SLX Longlife-II on all variable servicing engines (petrol and
diesel). It's available from Halfords, £40 for 4 litres (complete with
tamper-proof seal and, in some stores, anti-theft tags!)

From what i've read on variable
servicing it appears it's dependent on using a particular oil. Is the
petrol engine oil we've added likely to cause a problem? What's the
total oil capacity of an engine

Depends on the engine, but generally 3 to 4.5 litres. A quarter of a litre
will be ok, but don't do it again.

--
Vartan

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