So I have to admit I've been a little bit naughty. haha
I bought the car at 175K km and it had a service at 170K. Anyway normally I'd service a car straight after buying it but I decided to leave this one. When I first got it I did notice some accessory belt noise and found that the belt had almost worn all the way through and was cracked as. I was very surprised that a mechanic would miss this as it was a pretty obvious problem and belts are on pretty much all tick and flick sheets I have ever seen.
Anyway I should have taken that as a warning sign but I let the car out to 182K before I finally got round to servicing it this weekend. The previous service they put 0W-30 in it where it had been running 10W-30 all its life. I knew it had been burning a very slight amount of oil (possibly due to this) during the service interval so I topped it up a couple of times. Anyway I got around to dropping the oil and it came out pretty clean so I was happy with that. Only problem was... 4 Litres went in but only 3 came out
The oil is perfectly at the full level now so either the difference between the high and low dot on the dipstick is a little over 1L (was a little above the low mark) or I've been reading the dipstick wrong
Anyway the engine absolutely purrs so I don't think I've had any starvation problems. I also did an upper engine clean but barely any smoke came out. I followed the instructions on the can to the T. Maybe the NA engines get less crud in the intake compared to the turbos? So then I moved onto spark plugs... all I can say is holy shit! the electrodes were so worn I don't think they've been replaced since 100k (well I've never seen electrodes this worn). Three of them are the perfect colour though, the fourth one isn't too far off. I may pull them next service just to see how it's going.
I also found out that all my spark plug gaskets need replacing.
Anyone got a good source for them? Are they different for SOHC and turbo (DOHC)? Any help would be appreciated.