So... I had a bad experience with an oil light on our Omega while camping last weekend. Ended up dropping the sump in a field to find this: Please ignore the date, my camera lies about that. Also a fair collection of crunchy crud in the bottom of the sump. Fortunately, a good clean-up and we were mobile again. Now, back to Golfs. I bought a sump gasket from GSF (11616) ages back and never got round to dropping the sump to use it. Now I'm rather keen to do this preventive maintenance, but was wondering if anyone has had a bad experience with non-genuine gaskets? Tips on sump/strainer removal/replacement also v. welcome.
I've got 2 sump gaskets here, one is made of a rubber style plastic which seems to have a metal frame inside that and the other is your standard fibre/paper style one. Which one would you use or is close to the original vw item?
Nope. Has had very regular oil changes (3/year) during our ownership too. I think that only goes back about 5 years though, and it's now nearly 15. About 172K on the clock. I doubt mine will look as bad, even though the car's 5 years older, but I need to see.
Unfortunately I only had one screwdriver... The AA man took me to the nearest train station though, came back with all my tools, oil, filters etc. in the trusty Golf. Cheers for all the feedback chaps, I'll go with the GSF gasket. Got a new pickup-to-pump seal coming from VW.
The guy at GSF told me to grease both sides of the gasket before fitting when I did mine. It didn't leak and fitted fine.
The rubber gaskets are a later upgrade, and are more likely to seal, then come off in one piece and be reusable. Elring stuff from wherever you buy it (GSF / EURO / VWSpares) should be absolutely fine.
Job done, nothing scary found. There was the tiniest bit of gunge (1 or 2mm) lurking in the pick-up strainer, but nowt in the bottom of the sump. A waste of time, but a very reassuring one.
