Our local largish Tescos now stocks 2 litre bottles of their own synthetic 5-40 oil, for about £4.90p. First time I have seen it. The spec looks good, and in 5 litre cans it could be cheap. Anyone know who might make it, and if 5 litres is sold?
I have always thought UK supermarkets are way behind French hypermarkets that seem to sell a vast array of their own and other oils so cheaply. Any decent competition would help lower prices, on a product that seems so cheap in France and the USA.
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I do not know about Tesco's oil, but I have used oil from French supermarkets, specifically Auchan 10w-40 Semi-Synth, for the last 70,000+ miles in my Transit 2.5 DI.
I do not need to top-up between (10,000) mile oil changes and the engine seems just fine. The cost of this oil for a 5 litre plastic 'can' in the Calais area is ?13-50, or about £9-45 in UK money.
They do a full-synth oil for rather more cash, but I have never bothered.
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I have used Carrefour's (and other French supermarkets') own brand of Synth 5W40 for many years in high mileage Citroen/Peugeot XUDs - one of them 330,00 Kmiles+. No problems whatsoever and fuel consumption appears much the same as with Mobil 1 5W40 at over twice the price.
As I see things, if the published specs are the same (they are), then surely they cannot differ by much? Consumer protection here (France) would come down like a ton of bricks upon an outfit like Carrefour/Auchan, so I woiuld doubt a scam in this respect FWIW.
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Do you think that in a VW engined car (non-PD but with a turbo) it is strictly necessary to use VW spec oil?
For PD I can understand but this is quite an old design souped up with a variable vane turbo and an intercooler as far as I can see.
I wouldn't use any old rubbish in there but I can't see why this engine would need special oil. My Peugeot HDi had no need for Peugeot brand oil, for example.
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For PD I can understand but this is quite an old design souped up with a variable vane turbo and an intercooler as far as I can see.
The clinder block is quite old I suppose, however the main thing about VaG PD engines is that the engine is neither direct injection or common rail in design, as each cylinder has a Pump/Injector assembly driven by the camshaft. This is a very efficient design, but with the drawback of needing a very high 'sheer resistant' type of oil due to the extreme stress on the camshaft. Do not risk using non VaG group spec oils in these engines. In fact some months ago, I saw a post somewhere on the web of a guy who had used 'regular'oil in a PD engine, and he had the pictures to show the obvious damage done.
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Do not risk using non VaG group spec oils in these engines.
I wouldn't, if I had one. ;o)
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Re "the engine is neither direct injection or common rail in design", PD is most certainly direct injection. It does not have the Comet pre-combustion chamber that indirect diesels possess. The other comments though seem unarguable:) My last VW was a 110hp Passat (pre-PD) and i ran that on either M1, or Synta (the VW branded synth) for 50,000 without trouble, which of course proves nothing about the oil, being just one data point.
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Re "the engine is neither direct injection or common rail in design", PD is most certainly direct injection. It does not have the Comet pre-combustion chamber that indirect diesels possess. The other comments though seem unarguable:) My last VW was a 110hp Passat (pre-PD) and i ran that on either M1, or Synta (the VW branded synth) for 50,000 without trouble, which of course proves nothing about the oil, being just one data point.
Just a qickie... the Riccardo Comet (series of) indirect injection utilises remote combustion, which is in fact the primary (main) combustion chamber, and allows the stretching of the combustion time envelope by mechanical/chemical means. The Daimler Benz indirect system is rather different physically, but achieves the same end.
Modern direct injection uses electronics to control the combustion time envelope in a much more sophisticated manner than is possible mechanically, by at least an order of magnitude - probably more. In reality, there is nothing fundamantrally new under the sun these days!
When it comes to reliability I know which I prefer... nevertheless, HDis are simply wonderful to drive by comparison.
Wasn't that quick in the end...!
For more info on indirect diesels see: The High Speed Internal Combustion Engine by Harry (Sir) Riccardo.
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IF it is true that the VW PD 'Doser' injection system needs such exotic lubrication sophistication, it is surely a case of extremely bad design philosophy... curing boundary lube conditions with witch's brew lube does not sound like good German engineering at all - shame on them.
The one shot injection system IS certainly direct as someone has said, but pretty old hat having been used on marine diesels since God was a boy.
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I don't think the VW Norm oils are so much exotic, but have to be consistent in qualities such as HT/HS, and maybe other parameters. Thus the testing regime. The 505.01 is after all a semi-synth, but good enough for the purpose over 10,000 miles. I assume so as there don't seeem to be many reports of top end failure, except for the 150hp engine.
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The one shot injection system IS certainly direct as someone has said, but pretty old hat having been used on marine diesels since God was a boy.
Yes but the old spring-loaded direct injectors and rotary pumps of old could'nt even deliver a fraction of the injection pressure that the unit-injector diesels can. Also, as someone has mentioned previously in a round about way, the only other drawback of PD engines is that you can't use all of the fancy 'pilot-injection' techniques to make the engine very quiet at idle like common rail units.
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only other drawback of PD engines is that you can't use all of the fancy 'pilot-injection' techniques to make the engine very quiet at idle like common rail units.
A valid point, but nevertheless, if I understand things correctly, PD cannot give anything like the total sophistication of CR HDi control.
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With piezzo injectors PD is able to provide multi-shot injection. The more powerful TDI engines have this facility, in addition to much higher injection pressures than CR.
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With piezzo injectors PD is able to provide multi-shot injection. The more powerful TDI engines have this facility, in addition to much higher injection pressures than CR.
Without the pre and multi shot option it is pretty sure that noisy idle and present 'rortiness' will prevail - bourne out in practice in fact. Although the higher pressures should give finer atomisation/control, current HDi CR motors are not significantly worse in fuel economy, and higher pressures are in the pipeline. God only knows what the replacement costs of these components will be though - they are already scandalous.
Noisy idle on VAG diesels seems pretty variable from one to another...
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Noisy idle on VAG diesels seems pretty variable from one to another...
Interesting point actually, I've always thought that my meticulously maintained Audi 1.9 i 130PS was noisier than a lot of others I've seen at idle. My dad has a Passat TDi 100 PS and it is very quiet at idle cold and hot.
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Re "Without the pre and multi shot option" PD already has the pre-injection function. Piezzo-electric control makes finer control of fuel atomisation possible. At a cost, of course.
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This is a clear explanation of PD and its non-piezzo function: www.bhpplus.co.uk/pages.php?pageid=19
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This is a clear explanation of PD and its non-piezzo function: www.bhpplus.co.uk/pages.php?pageid=19
Given the ability to read Pidgin Tech German...
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Yes, thats a slight snag. You should see the CR version:)
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