Baffled,,,Any guru's wanna take a crack?

[The Cheat]

well, the reccommended oil is 5w40, not 5w30 for the 2.0. the 2.0 follows vw's 502.00 oil spec, which lists an oil with a 40 weight. i run 15w50 in the 98-01 2.0's because it really slows the consumption down.

yes, there's the slight lifter tick on startup, but as you said, it goes away when warm. it's no additional money to run the 15w50 over the 5w40, so why not? you'll notice less oil consumption (which more than likely is the result of the #2 oil scraper being installed upside down), and i personally notice in my 2.0 that it runs smoother.

your mileage MAY go down, i compensated for that with a couple extra psi in the tires (1 mpg decrease).

what do i know though, i've only been doing this over 10 years, and there are hundreds of 2.0's touched by me that have this oil in them.

[Smileybug]

I run 5w-40 in my 2.0 but I got lucky and managed to get a 2.0 without an oil consumption problem. I hardly ever have to top up between changes.

[Pseudotropheus]

Originally Posted by The Cheat

well, the reccommended oil is 5w40, not 5w30 for the 2.0. the 2.0 follows vw's 502.00 oil spec, which lists an oil with a 40 weight. i run 15w50 in the 98-01 2.0's because it really slows the consumption down.

yes, there's the slight lifter tick on startup, but as you said, it goes away when warm. it's no additional money to run the 15w50 over the 5w40, so why not? you'll notice less oil consumption (which more than likely is the result of the #2 oil scraper being installed upside down), and i personally notice in my 2.0 that it runs smoother.

your mileage MAY go down, i compensated for that with a couple extra psi in the tires (1 mpg decrease).

what do i know though, i've only been doing this over 10 years, and there are hundreds of 2.0's touched by me that have this oil in them.

Not doubting your knowledge or expertise. In the summer I use quite a bit thicker oils. In the winter I go thinner.

I can also say since using the decarbonizer, and 92 octane. The Beetle has currently gone through .9 gallons of gas, and I am currently at 29 miles. Doing very well.

[gamefoo21]

Oooh... God...

Don't use that Lucas garbage in your engine. The synthetic 'oil stabilizer' is crap 75w90 gear oil, the non-synthetic edition is crap that is so thick they have to pre-heat it to burn it as boiler fuel on ships.

Get some quality 5w40 synthetic, and install that. Lucas is the very definition of snake oil. Schaeffers, Shell Rotella, Castrol Edge or Castrol 0w30(very solid oil).

If you tell me you use Fram filters too... Oi!

Oh, and I've run 0w-40 Shell Rotella SB all winter long and we get -35c here, and I'm running 5w40 Shaeffers in it right now. Redline Power Steering Fluid in the power steering system, Redline D4 in the tranny... Oh how good Synthetic oil does so much good, but it does cost more than lousy dino oil, which actually gets thicker at warmer temps most dino based 5w30 can only pour to -25/-30 and this 0w40 -45c, the 5w40 is -42c.

Treat your VW right, and it'll treat you right, feed it crap oil, and it'll puke it up.

[Pseudotropheus]

I use Mann filters or Bosch filters. I beg to differ on Lucas, and there are many that would. I have used Lucas for well over 5 years now in all vehicles, and my engines on my Honda's have never been cleaner and never ran smoother.

I have used it on my Beetle for 2 years now, and my compression numbers are amazing, leakage tests were good as well, for a car with 141K on it.

When mixed with normal oil, it thins it out, and it is not as thick. It warms up and is a good additive.

You are entitled to your own opinion, however, being in school, where we use it, and also from experience I'll use it as my only choice for oil additive.

[Canadianbugin]

Originally Posted by The Cheat

well, the reccommended oil is 5w40, not 5w30 for the 2.0. the 2.0 follows vw's 502.00 oil spec, which lists an oil with a 40 weight. i run 15w50 in the 98-01 2.0's because it really slows the consumption down.

yes, there's the slight lifter tick on startup, but as you said, it goes away when warm. it's no additional money to run the 15w50 over the 5w40, so why not? you'll notice less oil consumption (which more than likely is the result of the #2 oil scraper being installed upside down), and i personally notice in my 2.0 that it runs smoother.

your mileage MAY go down, i compensated for that with a couple extra psi in the tires (1 mpg decrease).

what do i know though, i've only been doing this over 10 years, and there are hundreds of 2.0's touched by me that have this oil in them.

I agree..... If your oil consumption is that high... The only option is to run a thicker oil viscosity...!!!! Other than doing a complete re-build that is.... As i asked you (the OP) before. How long has the car been going though this amount of oil???

[Canadianbugin]

Originally Posted by gamefoo21

Oooh... God...

Don't use that Lucas garbage in your engine. The synthetic 'oil stabilizer' is crap 75w90 gear oil, the non-synthetic edition is crap that is so thick they have to pre-heat it to burn it as boiler fuel on ships.

Get some quality 5w40 synthetic, and install that. Lucas is the very definition of snake oil. Schaeffers, Shell Rotella, Castrol Edge or Castrol 0w30(very solid oil).

If you tell me you use Fram filters too... Oi!

Oh, and I've run 0w-40 Shell Rotella SB all winter long and we get -35c here, and I'm running 5w40 Shaeffers in it right now. Redline Power Steering Fluid in the power steering system, Redline D4 in the tranny... Oh how good Synthetic oil does so much good, but it does cost more than lousy dino oil, which actually gets thicker at warmer temps most dino based 5w30 can only pour to -25/-30 and this 0w40 -45c, the 5w40 is -42c.

Treat your VW right, and it'll treat you right, feed it crap oil, and it'll puke it up.

I disagree with your statement that Lucas is crap. I have used Lucas in my VW's for more than twenty years and all have gone more than 500,000 + KM's... Have also used Lucas in our 914-6 race car and race only motor cycles... With no engine failures or any mechanical failures whatsoever!!! Friction is your engines enemy...

[Pseudotropheus]

Originally Posted by Canadianbugin

I agree..... If your oil consumption is that high... The only option is to run a thicker oil viscosity...!!!! Other than doing a complete re-build that is.... As i asked you (the OP) before. How long has the car been going though this amount of oil???

Winter months only. Summer months it doesnt chew at all.

I use Lucas during summer, dont use Lucas during winter.

Lucas gets used from May to September. No Lucas october through april.
I have never not used Lucas during summer months. So to be exact I am unsure.

[Pseudotropheus]

Originally Posted by Canadianbugin

I disagree with your statement that Lucas is crap. I have used Lucas in my VW's for more than twenty years and all have gone more than 500,000 + KM's... Have also used Lucas in our 914-6 race car and race only motor cycles... With no engine failures or any mechanical failures whatsoever!!! Friction is your engines enemy...

I am with you 100% on this. I swear by Lucas, and will combat any negative feedback til the day I die.

During the summer months. My engine likes it. Keeps it cool, less friction, and doesnt chew.

[gamefoo21]

Originally Posted by Canadianbugin

I disagree with your statement that Lucas is crap. I have used Lucas in my VW's for more than twenty years and all have gone more than 500,000 + KM's... Have also used Lucas in our 914-6 race car and race only motor cycles... With no engine failures or any mechanical failures whatsoever!!! Friction is your engines enemy...

I agree with you, but Lucas is all Marketing, and not much beyond that. I'm very into lubrication, I've made motors go far beyond what they were ever meant to, and I know all too well just how much using lousy oil can cost in the long run. I've still got nightmares over the turbine shafts from some turbo's I rebuilt, I spent an hour on each shaft with a dremel and a stainless brush digging out the oil seal. Cheap dino oil + hot turbo shaft + lack of ZDDP(to protect catalytic converters) = massive carbon build up almost into the bearings.

I was contemplating it, and I even tried it because I got some for free/cheap, I wasn't impressed. Then over the years I stumbled across some things.

http://www.amsoil.com/lit/g2457.pdf

The Lucas gear oil gets hammered. There is more out there if you care to google it.

Lucas hates to give out tech data on their 'oils' stuff that every other company gives out. The oil stabilizers are jokes, sure enough gear oils aren't really all that much thicker than engine oils, what makes the Stabilizers bad for your engine is, think about oil like little balls.

Non-Synthetic stabilizer is like boulders, it's thick and gooey, it takes up lots of space, you only add what's on the bottles 'directions' if you have rod knock or similar massive wear issues. Using a really thick oil, will cause oil starvation which in turn leads to increased wear, which occurs until the clearances are large enough to allow the large balls through, which can and will prevent the smaller balls from passing through, think about how cholesterol plugs arteries.

Ok so the Synthetic version, not so thick, but just like it's thick and gooey brother, it's not meant for a engine, it's still thick and heavy, get's thicker faster, and the real reason it goes up those gear wheels on display faster is that it completely lacks any anti-foaming additives, which means they both cause your oil to foam up, rather than being a liquid it's like pouring dish soap into a dish washer, you end up with an overflow of foam and water somewhere.

Ever notice too, that the 30% Lucas side of those gears always wobbles more than the other side even though all the gears are lightly covered in oil on the other side, they take longer to wear out...

Sigh either way, get a good synthetic *w40 or *w50 and hope you having butchered the guts of your car with that Lucas Oil Stabilizer. Believe me or not, just google around, the info is out there if you want. When you are having to stuff tar down your car's throat to stop it from using oil, that would be a sign that you need to change the grade of oil.

If you are dead set on using a w30 oil, go and get yourself 5L of Castrol Syntec 0w30, and you'll only be able to get it in 1L containers. That oil meets and exceeds all German engine oil specs, hell it's even made in Germany.

[Pseudotropheus]

Most oils come from the same place, they are just refined.

The "lil" balls theory. I know exactly what you are talking about in terms of that. What your reffering to is the refining process of the molecules.

As much as the link is informative. AMS Oil seems to eliminate their biggest competitors on the charts. Example would be saying a Pennzoil product is better then Lucas or Royal Purple.

Thats what one of the charts shows. Even further it shows the viscosity is better on Pennzoil products versus Mobil 1. They also claim in some of the sheer tests that Pennzoil is better then Castrol and RedLine.

On the actual wear tests, Lucas was rated #1 in wear on the 4ball test. So these finding are very inconclusive, and almost seem biased.

I will NEVER use a Pennzoil product in any of my vehicles! Period. When I use it I use 4 quarts of 5w-30 or 10w30 and a 1/4 quart of Lucas.

Making the startup viscosity tests based on how I use Lucas completely irrelevant because I am not using it the way they are testing it. Therefore the Oil pickup tube has no issues picking it up.

My compression numbers are in the 180's and 190's. My leakage tests are within 24-29%. This is after 141K.

I think honestly, alot of these kind of things are like the supplement industry, you'll never know the truth, because the companies dont want it known.

Its all based on driver preference.

[archiebug]

Every 2.0 i've ever owned has used around a litre of oil every 1000 miles or so, sometimes more than that, sometimes less than that depending on how its been driven.

We have a 2007 2.0 New beetle (UK car before you all say they didn't do a 2.0 in 2007 - they did i the uk!) with only 19k on it and that uses at least 1 litre every 1k, the other3 2.0 NB's we've owned ranging from 2000 to 2007 all use this amount of oil, the consumption you say isn't too unusual, a little higher than normal but nothing I'd say to be concerned about.

[gamefoo21]

You'd be much happier with a 5w40 synthetic in that car than the current 5w30 you are using. What you are doing with that Lucas is you artificially increasing the viscosity of the oil, with a goo that doesn't have to meet any standards,

You are rather wrong that most oil comes from one place, unrefined crude comes from many places, is processed by many different companies, and then in the world of synthetics, they are produced in various labs/manufacturing complexes.

But either way if you feel some misplaced loyalty to Lucas as you are displaying, their products are constantly being shown to be overpriced.

Lucas oil stabilizer and their limited specs put it with a viscosity of 110.0 cst @ 100c.

http://www.lucasoil.com/images/media...abilzr_1_2.pdf

So high that it doesn't even come close to being listed under proper lubricants viscosity range:

Viscosity Charts

As for reducing friction and being better for the engine... That's hilarious.

http://www.lucasoil.com/images/media...4A91345BE8.pdf

Residual Oil, Solvent Refined <60%

So it's the skanky gunk left over from making even Walmart oil. So it lacks any additives, any real proper base stocks, this **** is heating oil.

As for the synthetic...

Viscosity of 45 cst @ 100c

http://www.lucasoil.com/images/media...Stabilizer.pdf

Ahh again, right in line with 75w90 gear oil.

The MSDS is blank though:

http://www.lucasoil.com/images/media...Stabilizer.pdf

So probably it's lacking of any real anti-wear additives or friction modifiers and god knows what makes up the base oil.

The only times company's hide this stuff is when they don't want consumers to find out that they are hawking snake oil.



There you go, impartial third party sources and direct from the Lucas website... Hopefully someone finds all this useful and will spend their money more wisely.

Edit: The molecules in the oil have alot to do with their viscosity, stupidly thick oil will have larger molecular chains. It's why 5w30 engine oil will pour like water compared to the cold honey pour of Lucas stabilizer when both are at room temp. Some stop leaks are based on the same idea, they use those big molecules to plug leaks and increase engine compression.

As for the foaming of oil, it may not cause oil starvation, but it will increase oil temperatures and it will foam around the crank increasing the power required to spin the engine over. The other problem with 'Oil Honeys' like Lucas is that they cause horrible sludge formations in the engine, which do cause advanced wear and pre-mature engine failure.

The more you know.

Oh and the GF's Beetle with it's 2.0 and 190,000 km barely uses any oil and it's running Schaeffers 5w40 which is an high quality fully synthetic oil...

Oh and want to know what a proper MSDS sheet looks like, here's the one for the oil in that engine:

http://www.schaefferoil.com/msdspdf/9000.pdf

The power steering fluid, for an informative webpage about a product:

http://www.redlineoil.com/product.aspx?pid=79&pcid=27

Edit 2: Had to ponder what you meant about the 4 ball test, because the Lucas gear oil had one of the lowest failure points for the weld test. The wear index is a pressure that is applied below the weld point. What is more important is the shock pressure to prevent metal to metal galling, at the pressure where Lucas fails and causes the transmission/gear case to fail, Redline, Amsoil, many others are still operating just fine. I like how they point out how doing good in 1 test but not the other is not a sign of a good oil, like the Lucas.

In the 4 ball wear test, the one where they apply a pressure that is equal across all oils, and then measure the diameter of the scar, the Lucas manages to end up with the biggest scar in the oil. So when it gets less pressure, it puts up solid numbers, when it's subjected to the same numbers as everyone else, it falls flat on it's face.

The channeling test, the Lucas fails, so in cold weather, it's trash.

It had .25 ml of solids condensed after the condensation test, and look at all the junk in the oil on the filter test.

I run Amsoil 75w90 in the Beetles differential. Redline in the PS, Redline in the Transmission, Amsoil in the Diff, and Schaeffers in the crank... Now who's biased?

[Pseudotropheus]

I did not say you were biased. I said the test results seem biased. The prime example, is that they claim Pennzoil is a better product versus Royal Purple, Lucas, Mobil 1, Castrol.

This is why I say biased. They are claiming that their top competitors are worse then the lower quality Pennzoil.

Almost all synthetics contain additives as part of the refining process. I have used mostly Valvoline products for the last 10 years, with no issues. I just picked up this Beetle about 2 years ago. She had sludge when I got her. I put a new oil pan on it, cleaned out the sludge, and have used Lucas since with no sludge. Lucas is like 8 bux.

Its like tools. Everyone swears by Snap-On Tools. However, I choose Matco Tools. I choose Matco because the quality is relatively the same and the price point is alot more wallet friendly. Snap-On will tell you there is a difference, and yet I am around Snap-On allday long and I use Matco, and I cannot feel, or find a single difference.

Matter of fact, I like Matco's ratchets more as they get into tight spots better, as they are slimmer, and proven to deliver more torque. I prefer Matco air tools, as they also deliver more power and are just as durable.

Whats the difference, between oils and tools, etc...
I didnt overpay. Just because it cost more doesnt mean its always better.

[Canadianbugin]

Originally Posted by Pseudotropheus

As I do "Engines" this quarter in school. I decided to bring the Beetle in the shop and run a ton of tests.
I am going through about 1 qt of oil every 400-500 miles.

Yet, its not shooting out the tail end. I dont have a leak or any signs of dripping. I ran a compression test on all cylinders. Getting about 105-110 PSI on 1 crank, and as high as 190-200 PSI on 4 cranks.

I decided to do a Cylinder leakage test. I am running about 25%to 31%. There is supposed to be about 20% leakage. So its a little higher, however, it is no where near the danger zone.

With the slightly higher readings I was thinking Piston Rings. However, I would venture to guess that these readings, should not be a cause for concern.

I did run a Bore scope on all cylinders, and noticed a very excessive amount of "carbon" build up on the walls and atop of the pistons. I am gonna run some B&G 44K on it with some "Supreme-o" gasoline. See if this burns it away.

Still, how can I be chewing up this much oil. This baffles me... I cannot figure out where it is going...

OP ,How long has the car burned this much oil...?????? Oh and you should be using a 5w40 oil.

[Canadianbugin]

Originally Posted by archiebug

Every 2.0 i've ever owned has used around a litre of oil every 1000 miles or so, sometimes more than that, sometimes less than that depending on how its been driven.

We have a 2007 2.0 New beetle (UK car before you all say they didn't do a 2.0 in 2007 - they did i the uk!) with only 19k on it and that uses at least 1 litre every 1k, the other3 2.0 NB's we've owned ranging from 2000 to 2007 all use this amount of oil, the consumption you say isn't too unusual, a little higher than normal but nothing I'd say to be concerned about.

I find that type of consumpsion excessive.!!! My AEG does not even use a litre between oil changes and it has more than 284,000 km's on it...???? P.S. I do drive my car hard everyday..