OK, this is probably an invitation to sheer speculation, but here goes --
Last August, in the face of a rapidly spreading epidemic of oil sludge, VWoA sent a letter to owners of cars with 1.8T engines, essentially telling them to start using synthetic oil if they were not already doing so. Since then, I have been reading about alot of cam seal failures on VWVortex and ClubB5/PassatWorld. My experience is similar -- my cam chain started to clatter on hot idle not long after I switched from Castrol GTX to Mobil 1, and I took the car in for warranty-covered replacement of the internal cam seals and (probably unnecessarily) the cam chain adjuster itself.
I might actually start believing the allegations that switching from dino to synthetic "causes" or "exposes" oil leaks, presumably by cleaning build-up deposits out of them, but I think we have only enough evidence to demonstrate correlation, not cause-and-effect.
Last August, in the face of a rapidly spreading epidemic of oil sludge, VWoA sent a letter to owners of cars with 1.8T engines, essentially telling them to start using synthetic oil if they were not already doing so. Since then, I have been reading about alot of cam seal failures on VWVortex and ClubB5/PassatWorld. My experience is similar -- my cam chain started to clatter on hot idle not long after I switched from Castrol GTX to Mobil 1, and I took the car in for warranty-covered replacement of the internal cam seals and (probably unnecessarily) the cam chain adjuster itself.
I might actually start believing the allegations that switching from dino to synthetic "causes" or "exposes" oil leaks, presumably by cleaning build-up deposits out of them, but I think we have only enough evidence to demonstrate correlation, not cause-and-effect.
