Here are some good articles on oil.
Motor Oil Viscosity Grades Explained in Layman's Terms
Oil Viscosity Explained

3000 mile oil changes are a waste of money and time. Read the owners manual.

 

Oil is cheap, engines are not. And clean oil is key to making the engine last longer.

 

Doesnt the owner manual say like 10k? I agree 3k is reciculous for the non turbo v6, but if your paranoid about sludge in the 1.8t its a little more understanding at 3k, even tho you should be fine running good full synthetic changing every 5k.

 

sure that sounds logical, just like the service interval for the tbelt. \sarcasm\ its people like you that sludge up the engine and wonder how it happened.

 

I do mine 5-7K miles and I can show pictures of a perfectly clean engine. Not one bit of sludge. 178,000 miles. But hey it's your money **** it away if you want.

 

oil doesnt really cost that much....

 

There were a good amount of oil threads and I read damn near all of them. However the majority were around the 1.8T which does not help me.

Add to that I lived the 1.8T sludge issue a few years back in my Passat. I don't ever want to revisit that again. Basically I changed the oil every 3,000 miles, it died from oil starvation, I spent 3 months with the dealer and VWoA.

They ended up denying my claim so I exploded at the dealership, verbally raped the owner and service manager within earshot of suctomers, had a towtruck yank my car off their lot and told them outright to shove their claim you know where.

So to avoid all of that fun, just wanted to get a bit of info on the 2.8L.

 

From what I've read about the 1.8T engines, they must really cook the holy snot out of the oil. That engine probably could benefit from adding an extra big oil cooler on to the system.

With my 2.8 V6, I intend to keep changing the oil at 3K intervals. I've done that to my old Chevy pickup truck, and it's still clean inside the engine and running strong at 180K miles. My 14 year-old A4 may only have 76K miles on it, but I intend to see it to 180K and beyond also I'm not worried about spending a little extra money on frequent oil changes.

 

you can do all the 3k oil changes you want but it wont undo whatever the previous owner did to it.
id love to see photos of the oil pan and interanal head. if you got em post em

 

Previous owner of my A4 did 3K oil changes too, and had all the other maintenance performed on schedule and kept written records of everything. This car is the proverbial "creampuff" and I got a heck of a deal on it. The previous owner is one of my best friends for the past decade and I absolutely had to have this car when he was ready to sell it (he bought a 2012 Audi Q5 to replace it)

I'm the sole owner of my Chevy truck. Didn't keep immaculate records, but have done all the maintenance on schedule myself so I know its history intimately