I can hardly wait!!!

 

Hard to tell exactly their motivation but look at it this way: All 3.8's and 3.6's come from the factory with Mobile1 or equivalent. You can't wear out synthetic oil BUT you can pollute it with by-products of engine operation that the filters can't remove.

In either case 10k miles is IMHO too far anyway especially if you use the vehicle in town a lot or not on a regular basis. Over time you get viscosity changes and with the pollution of the oil a loss in it's ability to lubricate. If you drive 50+ highway miles every day the 10k is probably okay but that's really pushing it. I'll never run one past 5000 miles. Look at nice clean oil and filter as really cheap insurance against oil related engine failure. Especially in a TT car. Turbos are really tough on oil.

--CC

 

Hmmm, for my 997.1TT my SA said 10k miles or once a year for oil changes, whichever comes first. I would say that yes your theory is partly true, but i doubt if its ever that simple. Some oil is burnt hence, people on this forum having to add quarts of Mobil 1 depending on the oil meter. In those engines where you add 1 quart every 2-3k miles, its adding fresh oil, so I guess you could go 10k miles without an oil change no? For the other engines, i have no clue why they dont burn oil. My check oil light came on last night, 3.6k miles and now needs to add 1 quart.

 

Well okay, so you add new, clean oil, to dirty, polluted oil yielding a crank case full of slightly less polluted oil but all of it polluted none the less. I also suspect that there's a lot more that do not burn a lot of oil past the initial 2000 miles than do. Ours used a quart or so the first 2000 miles and hasn't touched a drop since. Also, if you have a car that's using a lot of oil, the excess blow-by is adding even a higher percentage of pollutants to the oil than one that doesn't use oil.

Another interesting thing we noticed was we got a "check oil" warning but when we did it was actually still full. My guess is that unless you use the computer to check it every so often it warns you anyway. *OR* that thing is faulty and it just hick-up'd ... ... I've never been a fan of that electronic level checking thing. What's wrong with an old-school dipstick anyway ?

Also note that these manufactures are under a lot of pressure to reduce disposal of consumables [ like used oil ] and cost of maintenance. Who's best interests do you think they really have in mind ?

--CC

 

have 30k miles on my 2008 997tt. has burned about a half quart of mobile1 0/40 every 5k miles consistently since I bought her at 8k miles.

 

I'd say that's well within the realm of reasonable. Since you're in CA then you can probably run 5w40 oil and it might even go down closer to zero burned.

 

I couldn't be happier with my 2010 Turbo, it is a truly monstrously powerful car. With the PDK, you can concentrate more on steering the car as it accelerates to warp speed in a few seconds with only a press on the gas pedal!