Quote:
Originally Posted by jyl
what kind of oil will you use?
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I'm thinking name brand 20w50, same as it ran since new. Non-synthetic. Did you see the picture of the cam? If that doesn't settle every oil discussion forever, nothing will. The important thing is to change it on time, mileage-wise. Time means nothing, IMO.
There was recently a thread here with a poster wondering if he needed to change the oil in his Toyota Corolla because it had been in the car
a whole year while only being driven a couple of thousand miles during the pandemic. The correct answer, that I shouted, was ABSOLUTELY ****ING NOT!
Plenty of others disagreed. They had all kinds of weird theories about what happens to oil sitting in a crankcase, never brought up to proper temp, etc. It's all kind of a *does the refrigerator light really turn off when you close the door* discussion...no one knows and everyone feels fine guessing. I actually rebuild engines, (a lot of them), and have brought numerous cars and motorcycles back from long slumbers. It is possible for moisture to get into a sleeping engine under the wrong conditions but if it does, changing the oil ain't going to help.
This Scirocco last had its oil changed in 1995, ~500 miles ago. The car was driven very little in the next few years, (500 miles in 5 years guessing on the timeline), and then it sat until now. 20 years ago, the owner, now living 3k miles away, had his mother start the car occasionally to keep the battery from going dead. Talk about not reaching operating temperature, it probably only idled for 5 minutes every month or so. Then it sat for 16-18 years without being touched.
The oil that is in the car from 1995 is perfect and I could run it for 6k miles if I wanted to with no adverse result. If there was any condensation in the oil, (a non-issue), it would 100% show up on that cam shaft, which is the easiest rusting metal on earth. The moisture would affect the relatively dry top of the engine the most, if it existed. Nothing else happened to the oil in the crankcase, it's the same clean oil as when the car was parked. This is not a theory or a guess, I'm looking at the oil and the engine it's in.
I'm going to change it and the filter, of course, to start out fresh and put a German filter on it. Oil filters are the scary thing to leave in too long, they can deteriorate in some instances and the media can turn to toilet paper and travel through the engine. I've seen it happen on an old Mercedes where the owner took it to Jiffy Lube and they did not have the correct filter, so they only changed the oil. For years. Cost her an engine.
On a side note, I posted some photos of the owners manual last night and someone even responded, now I can't see them(?)
