Variable or fixed service intervals for RS4?

[wolfgang]

The car i've just put a deposit down is currently on variable service intervals and has a full Audi service history. It is an Audi approved vehicle. I'm thinking of having it put on fixed 1-year, 10K-mile service intervals when I collect.

Is it a big deal with the long service intervals or nothing to worry about? I've had high-performance cars on 2-year intervals before with no issues.

[PetrolDave]

There's plenty of posts on here advising that the annual fixed servicing is most owners preference - 2 years or 20k miles seems an awful long time for the oil to be used. And my experience (and others I suspect) is that you can tell when the oil needs changing because the oil consumption goes up quite noticeably, and that happens well before 2 years or 20k miles.

[jj0007]

How do you know if the car is on Fixed or Variable servicing? Who decides? (sorry I'm a newbie)

[amanda1]

How do you know if the car is on Fixed or Variable servicing? Who decides? (sorry I'm a newbie)

The later modern cars are IIRC set to variable as a default unless you specify otherwise. The servicing can be altered by vagcom to either or. I personally prefer to use annual servicing on my RS6 as others have posted.

[HYFR]

Fixed servicing all the way

[neckarsulm]

We always wondered why Audi introduced long life.
Instead of 2 visits at £150 in 2 years the cars were having one visit at £200, why push that?
Now these cars are getting older it's pretty clear that the extended oil change intervals are causing problems because of oil sludging that in many cases means many hundreds of pounds worth of rectification work between 60k and 100k miles.
We had an A6 3.2 petrol in at 74k miles rattling like a bastard on start up because the cam chain tensioners weren't pressurising, serviced each 20k miles by Audi.
We flushed it, converted it to 10k intervals and it was sweet but Audi quoted to replaced the tensioner at many hundreds.

The service book should reveal if the last service was long life (aka AVS Audi Variable Service) or fixed interval.

[wolfgang]

Long service intervals, predominantly used by the German manufacturers, suit the fleet market greatly. Just consider how many German cars end up as company cars and 2-year service intervals are a very useful selling point when selling to the fleet market.

[neckarsulm]

Long service intervals, predominantly used by the German manufacturers, suit the fleet market greatly. Just consider how many German cars end up as company cars and 2-year service intervals are a very useful selling point when selling to the fleet market.

..very true yet why the f**k did they both putting the B5 RS4 on long life servicing? It had 380 PS from 2.7L (more than any other car per litre at the time) and a max global production run of 4000 cars!

[PetrolDave]

How do you know if the car is on Fixed or Variable servicing? Who decides? (sorry I'm a newbie)

The first owner should be offered the choice, but it can be changed at any service.

If the service display on the DIS shows a value over 365 days or 10,000 miles then it's definitely on variable servicing.

If both values are less than that then it's harder to tell, you can do it with VAG-COM but the interval since last service (which should be stamped in the service booklet) will probably be over a year if it's on AVS in this case.