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Oxnardo Ring

I am supposed to see Gabor next week so will see what he says (unless he pops in on this thread). I believe he found a pretty affordable synthetic alternative so I will see what he recommends. I learned my (painful, expensive) lesson on the Audi fluids with the power steering disaster, so I'd want to be 100% it worked before leaving Pentosin cold turkey.

jfrahm

I've got a lot of miles on Valvoline MaxLife ATF. Supertech oils look pretty good these days and I think the cheapest synthetic is probably worlds better than the semi-synth OEM fluid from 1994. That said it'd have to be really cheap to get my attention away from what has worked for me and is also pretty reasonably priced.

Zumkopf

Well, it's not like WalMart owns its own refinery and puts out its own stuff (although I suppose they could afford it). They buy it from a large refiner, so it's probably the same as something brand-named out there. I'm partly persuaded by the mere fact they went to the detail of listing the exact Audi/VW spec (and didn't claim it was good for "all Imports" or "all Audis"). The DEXRON-VI/MERCON LV bottle claims to be full synthetic. FWIW I've been using their Super Tech synthetic oils for quite a few years now, with no ill result.

On the price issue, $6 seems pretty good to me. But the bigger driver is that none of the local shops carry anything that claims to meet that specification under any brand name. Except $26.99 Pentosin. I checked the auto stores first, and would gladly have paid 6 or 8 or even 10 for something branded that works. "Super Tech" was literally the only other game in my town.

I'm thinking that with the rise of sealed transmissions without dipsticks, the retail sale of transmission fluid has gone way, way down. So the stocking of same has done so also. This is made worse by the fact that there are now a bewildering variety of different fluids (I'm old enough to recall pre-Dexron pre-Mercon days, when it was "ATF" and "Ford ATF"). Most retailers are going to concentrate on what sells and slight what does not.

Zumkopf
1998 Audi A8Q (D2) 143k

Samilcar

My local Walmart offers gallon jugs of Valvoline Maxlife ATF for $18 ($4.50 per quart). That made it an easy choice to use on my rebuild, as others here seem to have good luck with it.

audinutt

maxlife or schaeffer's work well.