spindlewood

I also wish there were a dip stick for the 2018 SQ5. When changing the oil myself, using the MMI is a pain. The MMI has locked me out of the oil level display for many minutes at a time. It's supposed to be only two minutes after turning off the ignition, but somehow things don't always work as stated. I want to get the oil level when I want the level - not when Audi thinks I'm responsible enough to have the level.... As best as I can tell, no one has made one compatible with the 3.0 B9 engines. For the 2.0 this one might work from ECS

There's a couple of other posts on the topic of B9 dipsticks here and here.

ribeye

No grinning here, the Pat's are taking a beating. Sorry I misinterpreted your post. Idaho.. I drove through there in the 70"s and I love your Potatoes.

Benzie

Being a person who's done his own oil changes on cars, trucks and motorcycles since the early 90's, I have to take exception to oil darkening as quickly as you say. My experience has been that oil darkens only after weeks of use and the contaminents have built up. That's one benefit to having a dipstick that the electronic gauge won't show you - you can see the color difference right on the dipstick and even on the rag you use to wipe. But if you take your car in for an oil change and it's dark that day then you can be pretty sure it wasn't changed. You can also smell the difference between old and new oil. But only if you have the experience and check it regularly to have that sort of mental reference framework in the first place, which admittedly your typical Audi driver probably won't have. My BMW motorcycle has a sight glass mounted on the side of the motor which is really cool because you could see the oil level right there....and it has reflective backing so you can see how dark the oil gets over time.

Boink

That's been my experience (over 50 years). The oil took days or weeks to darken (though they weren't synthetics).

Jester7677

Maybe it darkens quicker when using a vacuum and not getting all that you should/could out of the engine. I am with guys, having done my own oil for 30 years, it's not minutes.

Wires

Any vehicle with an oil cooler won't keep "clean looking" oil for very long. As soon as you start the engine, the old oil in the cooler and lines will blend with the new. That is all accounted for in the crankcase volume they spec.

Boink

Good point. Didn't realize this.

Wires

Modern engines are a lot better for keeping the oil "looking clean". The direct injection and EFI makes them run leaner, and with tighter tolerances, oil comes out in 3x longer change intervals than vehicles in the '80s, and still "looks better". I used to change oil every 1800 miles on my '82 Chevy, and it would wreak of gas fumes and be black as coal.

Benzie

This was never a problem for me on my 2002 allroad. Then again that thing took like 8 quarts of oil, so plenty of dilution. I would always pull the dipstick after an oil change....just to see how badly it was overfilled (and it always was) but the new oil would look like honey and not at all like the old oil. I only wish I could pull the dipstick on my SQ since that oil was just changed Monday last week, but alas I cannot. No dipstick! Curses!

mpbowyer

I'm just starting to look at replacing my Mazdaspeed 3 next year with a CPO SQ5. I'm disappointed to see Audi has gone this way. I had to replace exhaust valves on my 50k mile mercedes about 8 years ago because the oil condition / level system sucked and the timing chain tensioner failed. I check oil while getting gas pretty regularly, If I go with the SQ5 I will certainly be getting a dipstick, exhaust valves on a european supercharged low-mileage engine is (was) not fun, easy, or quick.