Seat Ibiza 6J 1.4 16V Oil
- Thread starter dm222
- Start date
I think either would be acceptable providing it met the recommended VW oil spec, which might be VW 504.00 on your engine (check your handbook)
Modern engine oils are lot more complicated than a simple SAE viscosity grade these days, they even go beyond ACEA descriptions. VW 504.00 compliant oils are normally SAE 5W/30 and ACEA A3, A4 or C3, but they have to do more than just that to properly meet VW's specs.
Of course putting oil in that doesn't meet the exact VW specification won't kill your engine, providing it's of the correct viscosity, but it might not run as well (some engines are more sensitive to oil choice than others). For example, on PD TDI engines if you didn't use 505.01 or 507.00 oil then the cam lobes and injectors would wear faster.
Modern engine oils are lot more complicated than a simple SAE viscosity grade these days, they even go beyond ACEA descriptions. VW 504.00 compliant oils are normally SAE 5W/30 and ACEA A3, A4 or C3, but they have to do more than just that to properly meet VW's specs.
Of course putting oil in that doesn't meet the exact VW specification won't kill your engine, providing it's of the correct viscosity, but it might not run as well (some engines are more sensitive to oil choice than others). For example, on PD TDI engines if you didn't use 505.01 or 507.00 oil then the cam lobes and injectors would wear faster.
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I would have thought 5W-30, but it seems that local Seat dealer still uses 5W-40, as said not much between them in real world use.
As ckyliu ha pointed out the exact viscosity is not very important. What is important is whether or not the oil meets the relevant VW spec. For your engine that spec is 502.00 for cars on time/distance servicing or 504.00 for cars on longlife servicing. If the oil meets the spec it will say so on the container. If your car is on time/distance servicing you can also use use 504.00 with no problems at all but it will probably be more expensive.
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Yes, strangely, to avoid confusion, VAG dealers tend to use longlife oils for fixed and variable servicing, I say strange as it was a VAG dealer that loaded 5W-40 - which is short service life oil, into my daugter's S/C 1.4 16v. I'm sure that they will have adjusted the price up to avoid any more confusion, though the actual fill quantity is never the same twice, which is good as I only paid for 3ltrs this time, it was 3.5ltrs previous year and 4.5ltrs the year before - but my daughter was paying for that thankfully!
5W30 could be either, it just describes the viscosity (i.e. how runny the oil is). As NetworkMan said VW 502.00 is normal life and VW 504.00 is long life both are available as 5W30. You won't know which (if any) spec the oil meets unless you have the full name of the oil on the invoice (so you can Google it) or the container labelling to refer to.
I think that's because many franchise dealers have engine oil fed to trigger hoses, through ceiling pipes from large drums, so they try to get one oil that covers as many engines as possible, and that's usually a high-spec long life. Anything else they have to buy as 4/5 litre containers like the rest of us. I don't know how they work out billing you, I would have thought they'd charge you based on your sump capacity, since that's how much they should be putting in.
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I think that you will find that all marques have local oil suppliers that provide total oil management ie including waste disposal. It always annoys me when they used to charge per 0.5ltr unit while they buy it in tankered in bunkered loads of maybe 500ltr providing a possible mark up of lots more than 1000%. Castrol and Mobil seem to be two of the main players.
That question has already been answered at great length above. There is nothing more to add!!
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Which engine type/code are you talking about? If it is the "B" variants, then I'd hope that VAG had sorted things out a bit. My personal experience of BBY engine is that it started to use "too much" oil quite a few years ago, eventually followed by a bit too much pinking. After looking into most other areas that might have caused the pinking, I took the plunge and bought a new oil separator - I'm not brave enough yet to stop using VPower fuel, but the oil usage has dropped seriously, or, maybe even stopped! So the oil using isues with that engine seem to have been down a fault with the oil separator.
Daughter has a late 2009 SC and it is now on 30+K miles, and it has never ever had any oil added between oil changes - and trust me, if it ever needed any oil, I would have been the one needing to provide it!
I was looking after it between January 2013 and January 2014 and I checked the oil once a month - and it's level never changed at all - which is good!
She had a 6K Ibiza before that - and its AUD(?) 1.4 8V never ever needed any oil either.
Also, over the period while I was looking after her car, she was running a 1998 "Corsa" (Holden Barrina) in Oz - and it never ever needed any oil!
The 1.4 non turbo doesn't really use much oil I top mine up a like 100ml ever 3000 miles just to keep it at the top of the dip stick, I use the long life mainly because because I get it cheaper from vw, but long life is a better oil, the leaflet that comes with the car saying use Castrol is a way of getting you to spend more money, quantum long life is what most of the dealers have some use shell, but I would always stick with long life you can tell the difference when it comes to service time, long life tendends to stay quite golden where non long life turns black quicker.
My guess is that Castrol pay SEAT to say, "SEAT recommend Castrol." I think on my car it is printed on the oil filler cap but I don't believe it's on the cap of a VW, Skoda or Audi. I wonder if it's on the cap of SEATs sold in places other than the UK.
In fact there isn't anything to say that any oil with the relevant VAG spec. isn't just fine as well and the handbook says so too!
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