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5W-30 Valvoline SynPower (full synthetic) and Mahle filter since I picked this car up at 89k in '11. Just cleared 175k last week.
I think what helped as much is the valvoline oil. Valvoline really agrees with my motor. Not sure why I have trouble with some of the other blends, but it's really quiet with the ashland add-pack.
Valvoline VR1 non synthetic. It is one of the ZDDP oils. Reasonably priced and the Z seems to like it.
[Valvoline SynPower](http://www.valvoline.com/products/brands/synpower/full-synthetic-motor-oil/5) is what I have run since I purchased my 2012 Subaru Legacy.
Anyway, when I had my Passat 1.8T and sludge issues were the big fad, my oil of choice was Valvoline Synpower 5w40. It met 502 and was not a synthetic blend but rather a real synthetic.
I use valvoline because it's common and it does the job. My auto mechanics instructor also recommended it because he said most of the engines he'd taken apart that had run valvoline looked pretty crud free.
I have run the 5w-40 and stuff every day here in utah and it works fine on 300-400 bhp setups. If you are going to the strip or the dyno and going for probably 450-500 crank I would probably grab that gold top mobil one 15w-50. I would also use that for any road racing where the engine oil gets really thinned out from heat. It's also cheap at wal mart I believe. Over at 575-600 bhp we lost a main bearing when doing endurance testing on valve springs with the 5w-40 and very reasonable oil temps. It didn't really catastrophically fail, but was on it's way to it when we tore it down. Have since switched to VR1 20w-50, and the problem so far appears to be cured. That stuff will carry way more load then the thinner oils- the catch is that it's absolute sludge until warmed up. Yet another one of the barriers to extreme power "street" cars I suppose. I'm keeping an eye on it to see if we have a solution. If that doesn't fix it, the problem may be aeration of the oil- we were running at 7500+ for pretty long periods. So basically now the oiling system is a major focus of R&D for us. The oil pressure was never out of the ordinary- although it does start falling once past about 7500 rpms which is also not great.
I refill about 1/2 qt of oil every 2500 miles.
Strictly anecdotal, but at 56,000 I switched from the usual suspect Castrol to Valvoline Synpower. Engine starts more smoothly and observed mileage on highway has gone from approx 30 to approx 34 mpg.
I use 20/50 Valvoline year round....
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