I'm wondering what other grades of oil can be used with a 1.6TD engine. currently I am using a 15/40 diesel oil (which I beleive is the recommended) however the engiens got about 155k on it and I have found if its been driven for a while and got upto temperature on idle the oil light comes on, lift the revs by maybe as little as 50-100rpm and it goes out.
I dont want to do a full strip down and rebuild as thats really not an option, but wondered if there are thicker oils you could use instead to maybe help?
I'd put a manual gauge on there (at the head) and see what it's actually doing before mucking with it's blood.
Some VW's have some rather convoluted oil pressure monitoring light systems, dual stage/sender
setups, precisely because they are prone to low hot-idle oil pressure that really isn't too detrimental.
It's working some basic trouble shooting even if you can't fix it if it's something really bad.
You could also bump the idle speed up.
I've seen these guys go for tens of thousands of miles with under 5psi at hot idle, long as it pops up
on throttle.
my car used to idle w/ 2-5psi HOT oil pressure..
it would bury my 100psi gauge @ cold start tho..
Volkswagen does not have an idle oil pressure spec for a reason.. as long as there is ANY oil pressure at idle your are good to go.
I would stick with the 15w40, or if you're brave you could swap to a synthetic.. I myself successfully swapped a high mileage 1.6TD from 15w40 dino (its whole life) to a 0w40 full synthetic just last summer. Not an oil leak to speak of and it doesn't burn a drop. By high mileage I mean high..
I don't think the type of oil is the problem. VW progressively increased the size of the oil pumps they used over the years and I think the early ones they used were inadequate in a somewhat worn engine. You can get oversized 36 mm pumps for the 1.6.
I always figured that was to accommodate hyd lifters.
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