RE: Oil, Sound, and Badges!

[Tim Irwin <timi@Interlinq.com>]

a) As far as the sound system goes, I suspect it mainly has to do with
individual listening preferences, and perhaps even driver's seat positioning
(where on the sound stage your ears are).

b) VW is allowed to give you as many or as few free oil changes as they wish
(how many companies even give you a single free change?). You are allowed to
change the oil as often as you wish. 

The general recommendation for breaking a VW in however, is to wait until at
least 5K before the first oil change. There is considerable debate on
whether or not the factory oil is anything more than non detergent SAE30, or
if it does in fact have special additives for use as a break-in oil.
Nevertheless, I've seen statements by enough VW mechanics/engineers, etc.
that say it would be better to change the oil first at 7500 or 10k that I
waited until the required 5k to change mine.

As for the subsequent 10k intervals, with a good quality oil, good oil
filters (VW's are supposed to be quite good), and a clean running engine,
10k would be fine. I drive in traffic, and have recently started
Auto-crossing and doing the occaisional driver's ed on the track, so I'm
doing 5k intervals and going with synthetic starting at 20k. BTW, I think
some Porsches have 15k+ intervals.

Tim Irwin
'98 Jetta GLX
http://www.members.cascade.org/~tjirwin/tim.htm


-----Original Message-----
From: Da Doctah [mailto:docluni@phc.net]
Sent: Monday, October 25, 1999 7:36 AM
To: Jettaglx
Subject: Oil, Sound, and Badges!


I posted this on vwvortex.com as well...

a) I have seen some mention of the Monsoon sound system in the 2000 Jetta's
not being very high quality? From reading the information at
http://www.monsoonpower.com/jetta.html it seems they have a decent setup
with a 200w amp. I am happy with the way my new Santana cd sounds in my
nifty new GLX, but I am wondering what causes people to think it's not
great?

b) This free scheduled maintenance deal...don't quite get it. They say I
need my first oil change at 5k miles. (I thought 1500 was more like it) and
then every 10k miles after that. Is this VW's way of avoiding 2/3rds of the
required oil changes? Shouldn't this be considered illegal business
practices if that's the case?

c) Where is a good online selection of VW related badges and what is
involved in adding/changing from the originals?