i run royal purple its ok but now my engine smells funny

 

Funny like burning oil? Check your valve cover gasket and around the block for seepage. Valve cover gaskets are known to go bad on these engines as early as 70k miles.. Oil can seep out of the valve cover and drip onto the hot block/exhaust manifold and burn up and smell. If that is the problem and if you replace it, make sure you degrease the inside of the valve cover itself. It probably has some caked on grease/sludge that gets blow by the intake etc.

 

you don't have a clean engine its covered in oil??? shocking[:@], forget the fancy name of the oil read the instructions 0W40 full synth is the best the rest is just what you can afford

 

and whats the best?? well ill tell you its semi synth 5W30 because you can mix it with any other oil to top up so a saving on cost ( you cant mix full synth ) so remember the cost full synth is ok for the track but costly for the normal road user

 

There has been at least one technical service bulletin from Audi of America that says to ONLY use fully synthetic oil with the 1.8t to prevent/eliminate sludging. I believe that is the same TSB where it says in addition to using fully synthetic oil to also use the larger updated oil filter. I think we need to be clear on what oil is best to use with a particular engine. For the 1.8t, it is fully synthetic without a question. There is also no reason to not use fully synthetic oil in a 2.8 because it can also suffer from sludge. Fully synthetic oil will not break down and burn up/slude like regular mineral oil will....

 

All you have to do is use a good quality oil that meetsthe ACEA 3 and VW 502.1 standards...

They actually use Catrol Syntec (semi synth) at the dealer.

The problem was that people were using cheap ol 5-30 oil that cost 1.29 / qt.

full synth is nice though, but semi synth is not "bad"

 

right, but when you consider the potential affects of using non fully synthetic oil at least in the 1.8t, with its sludging history, its really wise to use full synthetic.

 

is the sludging what caused the oil pump recall?

 

I wasnt aware of an oil pump recall..???

 

ahhh but it didnt say only use full synth only semi but it did say don't use standard oil because its petrol/gas based so it evaporates leaving the sludge, that's why its best to use man made synth oils