This is what happens when you don't change the oil in your car at 135,000 km

This is the curious story of a happy owner of a Audi TT 3.2 V6 -it is unknown whether it was a first or second generation model- who one day decided to take his car to the workshop because “it wasn’t running smoothly”.

Up to this point it could be considered a “normal” event in the daily life of anyone who drives cars with some regularity, however, the poor TT hid a rather striking secret…

The mechanics at the workshop quickly found that the last service had been carried out no more and no less than 135,000 kilometres ago. Obviously, the bad omens became reality the moment the workers began to open the engine. The images speak for themselves: what you see in the photographs (the upper part of the powerplant and the camshafts) are completely “buried” in a sort of viscous, petrified mass of dark colour.

All that substance you can see is nothing other than old oil, which begins to degrade, to burn and to build up in the form of oily deposits, providing, logically, no kind of lubrication. The mechanics were genuinely alarmed to find such a scene. What nobody can explain is how the car managed to arrive at the workshop under its own power and running.

In fact, the most viable option now for repairing the car is nothing other than a complete replacement of the powerplant, which seems to have been seriously damaged after running for an indeterminate amount of time in completely unfavourable conditions, without lubrication and without any kind of protection, either thermal or against friction.

This story also has its moral, and that is that good maintenance, using quality products and not letting it slide over time, is one of the best investments you can make, extending your car’s service life and, in the long run, being far cheaper.

Source | forums.tdiclub.com