[Krugmeister]

Sorry if this had been posted before (I did a search)
While at the dealership the shop forman told me that VW uses 0w-30 as break in oil for the GTI engines.. anyone heard of this?
Isn't the suggested oil type 5W-40 Castrol Syntec?

 

[ande1978]

I like to post posts without doing any research.

There's a strong chance that the car is lubed with heavy "mineral oil" (that's smart-guy talk for plain old non-synthetic motor oil) when it's new.

Here's the premise: the high compression of the motor, 10 to 1 or so, requires a really tight seal in the cylinders. The piston rings therefore need to be seated as firmly as possible around the pistons to create the best seal other wise oil gets past, gases get out and you lose power and foul plugs.

Synthetic oil has an extremely high lubricity, less friction means protecting parts and withstanding breakdown under heat. That's good, except for when your trying to seat those piston rings with the friction created in the cylinders (I think the inside of the cylinders actually have crosshatch scoring to assist in this), hence the lower lubricity, higher viscosity, higher friction break-in oil.

The break-in oil is probably non syn and that's why your first change is at either 3000 or 5000. Once you get the syn in (look for castrol for vw at Autozone or the like), the period between oil changes gets longer.

Here's where 30 other members call me liar and 20 more actually find out what's going on in that little motor and inevitably some VW salesman with jump in with a little known fact of the history of motor oils in Volkswagen engines built in Mexico. Ta-da!

 

[Krugmeister]

... while I didn't do any research in as much detail as you have provided, I was curious if anyone else had heard the same.
To me it sounds like it's true... and i thank you for the reply and the superflous amount of sarcam.

 

[ande1978]

... while I didn't do any research in as much detail as you have provided, I was curious if anyone else had heard the same.

Sorry brother, I wasn't trying to ding on you, just letting you know I seriously didn't do any research. It's just that every time I pull up a google search bar I end up looking at naked chicks and forget what I logged on to look up in the first place. i think something's wrong with my computer.