Wow I'm kind of regretting being some what nice in my post...

 

Alright lets get back on topic. 01ofew, you have less than 20 posts, watch your mouth. There have been a myriad of oil related threads here in the past few months, and they all end the same way:

Everyone agrees that synthetic oil is the way to go, in 0w-40 or 5w-40 depending on where you are. Oil change interval is a personal preference, someplace between 3 and 5 thousand miles is ideal.

/thread.

 

Thanks for that post CCA4. One other suggestion that I agree on is that it wouldn't be a bad idea to change your oil more frequently if you're racing or driving your engine hard all the time. That's when I would agree to change the oil every 3k mi. even with a full synthetic. I'm pretty gentle on my motor with occasional spirited driving from time to time. That's why I wait 5k mi.

 

It's still half of what you'd need to do with other cars, but do whatever you want with yours.

 

I know this. My '07 civic the recommended oil change was every 6k. But for me, I drive it like I stoke it, autox every weekend, and overall just use this car! I'm going to make sure that since audi jacked up that I'm not going.g to let it screw me!

 

01OFEW

Uh, you need to chillax, your new here, so please respect the older members of this forum before you start going off on what you believe. Also, I'm considering having you banned, because "army homo" was entirely uncalled for, and disrespects him, as well as this community. Read the rules. No one is allowed to say derogatory stuff like that. He served our country, be thankful for that.

 

X2...

 

As a relative newb, can anyone tell me how I can determine if my car has sludge and, if so, what I can do about it? Any way I can tell short of pulling the oil pan? I know not to do an engine flush, but is there anything else? If I just use a good-quality oil and filter, will the sludge break down and be filtered out?

 

Look under the valve cover... though sometimes people just clean that out and leave the rest alone.

You can run certain good additives like AutoRX if you want. I wouldn't trust most stuff. And stronger stuff like Sea Foam can be dangerous to use with large chunks of oil deposits because it might dislodge them without breaking them up. Not good. You can use it on an engine without sludge or with a minuscule amount of it.