what is a long life service

[andi v]

What is different between a long life service and a normal service ?????

[burwoodman]

simple-if you do big miles would you normally service twice a year? up to 20k for me is fine once a yr hence long life as opposed to twice a yr

[andi v]

Thank you for explaining it ,now i understand, Cheers

[Adrian E]

For older cars doing approx 10k miles a year it's better to have it on a standard annual service basis rather than stretch the intervals.

Long life service on my A6 only gave 14k miles before it wanted servicing anyway.

[liner33]

I thought it was the oil ,my dealership told me at least for diesels there is a different oil used for the 10k and 20k intervals also I suspect the fitter would take a better look at things like tyres and brakes if they knew they wouldnt be seeing the car for another 20k.

[cuprabob]

The main physical difference between the 2 service regimes is the quality of the oil used however, the majority of VAG dealers use longlife oil irrespective of the service regime these days..

[Dr G]

A lot of people (i.e. over 90%) put their cars on the longlife schedules regardless of use. Not good practice but what the customer wants...

I know I post this picture every 5 minutes, but...

[Mclelland77]

I was under the impression that a long life service was ok even if you dont do over 10k a year. All of my driving is basically motorway but only a couple of times a week so ive put my trust in the on board computer to determine when a service is due as it takes account of the driving cycles as well as months/years? As a result my car has never done more than 10k or 18 months without a service and it never misses a beat! Although oils go off over time this is effected by how many times it is heated and cooled so I say trust the computer!

[Adrian E]

If it always gets warmed up fully when it is used then it's probably OK on longlife, but it's really designed for reps that don't want their cars in for a service every 5 or 6 months. Nothing wrong with longlife oil - it's just better dropped out of the engine more frequently than every 2 years. More of an issue on high revving engines too - an S4 4.2 on longlife (inappropriately) will more likely have cam chain issues, for example.

I spend £90 on decent quality oil for an annual service on my S8 and wouldn't leave it in there more than 12 months as I do quite a few short-ish journeys in the car. As a car gets older I also think there's merit in having it inspected annually in case there's looming problems you can't see.

If on longlife the dealer is also more likely to fleece you for brakes etc - if the parts are likely to wear out before they're due to see the car next, they 'may' try and persuade you they need doing as they won't last till the next service. They may be only half worn, or less, though......seen this a few times, and not just with Audi

[Dr G]

Adrian you're in a tiny minority of people that take really good care of their cars.

Although I say that, sold two today and we're putting both of their cars onto annual servicing for the reasons already discussed.

[Brett748]

I've just leased a 1.6 TDI Ibiza FR and it came on Longlife servicing. I do about 20k a year but its made up of many short trips and then a few long ones a month. I will probably need a service after about 14k anyway based on my research.

In all honesty I give it back after three years so I couldn't give a toss about the longevity of the engine.

[liner33]

Adrian E said:

Long life service on my A6 only gave 14k miles before it wanted servicing anyway.

How does that work then?

[cuprabob]

liner33 said:

How does that work then?

It's variable, 19k miles is the maximum and if the car is driven hard or used for short stop/start journeys the mileage is reduced. The car has an oil quality sensor which plays a pert on the service intervals on longlife.

[anonymous-user]

andi v said:

What is different between a long life service and a normal service ?????

Here is the first result in google for you:-
http://www.volkswagen.co.uk/owners/servicing/regim...

[liner33]

cuprabob said:

It's variable, 19k miles is the maximum and if the car is driven hard or used for short stop/start journeys the mileage is reduced. The car has an oil quality sensor which plays a pert on the service intervals on longlife.

I know Mercedes had that wasnt aware that VAG do as well

[Dr G]

...although again, that's frequently rounded up to 20k miles and then strung out to 20,973

[JaseB]

How does that work though? My A6 went into Audi for a long life service and came out showing less than 9k to go til the next one, their response was that they set it to the wrong setting - Shirley that would be up to the oil quality thingummybob...

[Adrian E]

JaseB said:

How does that work though? My A6 went into Audi for a long life service and came out showing less than 9k to go til the next one, their response was that they set it to the wrong setting - Shirley that would be up to the oil quality thingummybob...

If they don't reset to longlife intervals it defaults to annual/mileage/number of cold starts to calculate when it thinks the next service is due.

Mine will say 3k till next service one day, then 500 the next, then 200, then due - mainly because it doesn't show number of days till service due unlike newer models so it runs the mileage down as you get close to 365 days since the last one.

[cuprabob]

JaseB said:

How does that work though? My A6 went into Audi for a long life service and came out showing less than 9k to go til the next one, their response was that they set it to the wrong setting - Shirley that would be up to the oil quality thingummybob...

Oil quality sensor only comes into affect if the car is set to longlife.

The service indicator has 2 modes, T&D and Longlife. In the first it's just a counter counting backwards from 9,300 miles (15,000km) and 365 days. Whichever one reaches zero first will prompt a "service now"

On longlife it uses the oil quality to continually adjust the estimate the time to service,

Some people think that because longlife oil is used the car automatically knows this and reverts to longlife. It's not the case, the service regime is set during the service reset procedure. If service counter is reset manually it will revert to T&D. longlife needs to be reset using VCDS.

The majority of VAD dealers use longlife oil no matter what service regime the car is set to.

It's easy to tell what service regime your car is set to immediately after a service. If it immediately comes up with a mileage figure it's set to T&D. If it comes up with "---" then it's set to longlife. It will take several hundred miles of use before it calculates a figure.

[liner33]

Ahhh I see where I was confused as I was sure my cars never had a oil quality sensor

There is no "Oil quality sensor" the sensor is called the "Oil level/oil temperature sensor" it doesnt measure the quality of the engine it provides data to the ECU which uses stored parameters to calculate the service frequency/oil quality. The Mercedes system actually measures the levels of contaminants in the oil , quite different.

Section from the VW pdf

[i]The Flexible Service Interval Display obtains information from the new oil level/oil temperature sender G266 in order to calculate oil level and oil quality.
On diesel engines, the oil quality calculation includes a parameter which indicates the average content of soot particles in the engine oil. This parameter was calculated in trials and is stored in a map[/i]

Further quite interesting reading here
http://www.volkspage.net/technik/ssp/ssp/SSP_224.p...