With 5w30 I was going through about 3/4 of quart in 4.5k miles.  With 5w40/10w40 I experience about 1/4 quart in 4.5k miles.

I broke it in according to manufacturer's recommendation, never driving above 4k or whatever it was, varying speed on the highway for the first 1,000 miles.

I have zero, and I mean zero oil consumption now. Whenever I check it, it's always full on the dipstick. 

I wish mine was a quart every 4kmiles.  its more like 2.5 -3 

hammyt wrote:

JPL315 wrote:

i went to check my oil yesterday and the dipstick read Uh No!!  checked again, same result.  added 1/2 qt and all was good.  first time this has happeneed, last checked several tanks ago, no blue smoke no drips or leaks. WTF?

Typical if you are using 5w30 IMO, only after moving to heavier oil, 10w40 has my consumption slowed significantly.

i'm running 10w30 Pennzoil PLatinum. with summer on the horizon, i may go to 10w40.  thanks for the comment

Scargo wrote:

I add nothing at all between 5K oil changes, whether I'm using Pennzoil Plat (which I tend to 'cuz it's cheap) or M1. AND I have no consumption btw changes.  The key thing I do is check consistently with the car on either the level or the same exact parking spot every time (which out of habit more than necessity is every week, it's part of the engineering geek in me).

I am not burning any either.  I'm at about 56K miles right now.

The Passat with close to 100K miles burns about 1L every 5K miles.

I am not worried about either of them.  I expect the 92X will start burning some eventually.

And yes I ran M1 for a while...

eurospek wrote:

Will switching to Rotella 5w-40 do me any harm?

I think a lot of people here use the Rotella T6 5w-40. I use it and I don't burn any oil at all. Still full at my 4500 mile oil change yesterday.

Probably going to catch a lot of flak for this, but try an OCI with conventional oil. I did this after noticing my car's propensity for guzzling synthetic, and my oil consumption has dropped to less than a 1/2 quart over 3k miles.

dude, I don't think your rack with bikes qualifies as a "pulling a trailer".

60K miles.  Not burning a drop between changes.

Our 1.8T Passat was eating a couple of quarts between changes.

Meh I wouldn't worry about it.

eurospek wrote:

krazykarguy wrote:

Probably going to catch a lot of flak for this, but try an OCI with conventional oil. I did this after noticing my car's propensity for guzzling synthetic, and my oil consumption has dropped to less than a 1/2 quart over 3k miles.

I thought it's bad joo-joo to switch over from synthetic back to dino.

What's a good conventional 5w-30 dino oil? Mobil1? What are you running? 

One more thing, going over the manual, it states pulling a trailer requires running a different weight oil, maybe I'm seeing more oil consumption due to the fact I'm driving around with a bike rack and two bikes on the hitch almost all week long when we go riding.

I'm using Kendall Semi-Synthetic Blend and I'm not burning anything atm. After this block gets past 3500 miles the turbo goes back in along with a nice full synthetic 5w-40.

Augie wrote:

krazykarguy wrote:

It's bad ju-ju to switch to synthetic after running dino beyond 75k, but going back to dino typically does not cause issues.

I usually run Castrol High Mileage 5W-30 in the winter and 10W-30 in the summer.

I don't doubt the voracity with which you believe this statement, but do you have a source? I know I see this all over forums, but something published?

at operating temp synthetic 5w30 is the same viscosity as dino 5w30???? if it was thinner it would be labeled as 5w20??

It's not a viscosity issue, it's the uniformity of molecules issue from what I understand. Synthetic oil molecules are all very uniform, as they are mass produced in a factory. Dino is refined from crude oil that we extract from the ground, and there really is no way that we can get the molecules all the same size. In addition, no matter how much you can refine the crude oil, there will always be impurities in it which the synthetic does not contain.

I guess what I am saying is that if you're running synthetic oil and it's disappearing, there is some synthetic oil molecule sized scratch on some bearing surface/gasket/etc. that is allowing the oil to go somewhere it's not supposed to be. In turbo cars, this is typically the oil passageways on the turbo shaft. As soon as it reaches the oil's flash point, consider it gone.

Consider that by the time that you car has turned 100,000 miles, the engine has likely made billions of revolutions, and if it has a turbo, it has likely turned in excess of half a trillion times. During your typical oil change interval for the Aero, figure 3,000 miles have passed, the engine has rotated millions of times, and the turbo has likely spun around many more times. All of this causes wear (no matter what kind of oil you use), and as the engine ages, it's requirements for viscosity typically increase. This is why I run a 10W in the summer where operating temperatures are typically higher.

Oh, and as far as a source - this comes from several years in a Saab dealership (working in the service department), and two years in an independent shop. I've personally seen many oil burning turbo cars benefit from a switch back to a high quality dino oil. As a matter of fact, in 2000 following the release of the 9-5 and the renew of the 9-3, Saab began recommending a Semi-Synthetic oil for all it's dealer oil changes following oil consumption reports on the 2.0 and 2.3 turbo engines. It's also worth noting that the sludging issue that these engines experienced was not related to the type of oil being used (it was a PCV issue).

German Castrol 0 w 30.  Its a heavyish 30wt.  Other than GC i would simply avoid 30wt oils especially since your car is modded.