I changed the factory fill in my wife's new 2023 Q5 at 2,500 miles with Valvoline Euro 0w-20 meeting 508.00 spec. During this OCI I received a recall notice for potentially defective connecting rods where the diagnosis involves the dealer taking your car and beating on it then looking in the oil filter for metal - if metal is present the engine is replaced. When a manufacturing process goes out of spec you get a bell-curve distribution of dimensions, with only the ends of the bell curve potentially being so bad the rods are throwing metal - what about the ones that are marginally bad??? So I'm hunting for iron and copper here from big end bearings and being the engine is still breaking in I don't think there's much to be concerned about. I will sample again at 30k miles and post those results up.
Valvoline Euro 0w-20 508.00 / 7,005mi OCI / 9,508mi / 2023 Audi Q5 EA888 2.0 tsi
- Thread starter QuantumS4
- Start date
This sample looks good overall and nothing strikes me as concerning. I don't think we would be able to discern abnormal wear from break-in wear at this point.
Totally agree - can't rule anything out at this point, but there's nothing concerning either. VW/Audi says the engines fail before 10k miles so I have nothing to worry about - I'm not sold on that yet so will sample again at 30k miles while there's still lots of warranty time/miles left.
Wow. I would love to see the TSB instructions.
Remove oil filter.
Install a new oil filter and seal.
Run engine at idle until it reaches operating temperature of 90°C.
Turn on air-conditioning and all other engine loads.
Activate Sport mode.
Following all traffic laws, perform a road test, quickly accelerating from 1st to 2nd gear, bringing engine RPM up to 4500 RPM each time.
Perform this road test 10 times and pay attention to excessive engine knocking.
Bring vehicle back to the shop.
Let engine idle for at least 30 seconds.
Turn engine off.
Remove oil filter.
See examples of OK and NOT OK oil filter and housing on the following pages.
If no excessive metal particles are found:
o Engine does not require replacement. o Replace oil filter and seal again.
o Torque housing to 25 Nm.
o Proceed to Section D.
If excessive metal particles are found:
o The engine requires replacement.
o Take clear photos of oil filter and housing.
o Proceed to Section C
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And if you are looking in the oil filter for debris then a simple UOA may very well show nothing. We used to see this all the time in college regarding mechanical failures. Without an acid digestion the spectrographic analysis showed nothing alarming since the particles are far too large.
This is a really interesting observation, thank you for sharing! I had not thought of it this way but it makes sense. I did pass the recall test as well and haven’t seen anything in subsequent oil/filter changes so I was thinking one more UOA and put it to bed.
