Can I fill my car with any oil or is it car specific?

[hsffdd]

Worried… I know nothing about cars and no idea which oil to use. It’s a Skoda octavia

Some of us aren't quite as brave as others @ntmdino .
I feel your pain OP.
I was widowed, relatively recently, and the bloody car has caused me more stress than anything else.
Like yours, OP, there's nothing wrong with mine but I can tie myself up in knots worrying about this sort of stuff.

But if maintaining a full service history is important to you, you should service it at the earliest of:

• The required time interval (probably 12 months)
• The required mileage interval (based on what you've said here, probably 10,000 miles)

If you've done 10k miles in 10 months, then if you wait until the anniversary of your service in another 2 months, you'll have done 12k miles - so 2k more than you should. The chances of actual harm as a result of this are almost zero, but it will mean your car hasn't been serviced as per the schedule - so if bought on PCP for example, could mean a penalty when you hand the car back.

I'd disagree with "the least potential for catastrophic error" - if you expand "catastrophic" to include damage to things other than the car: I know someone who changed their oil themselves and ended up ruining their monoblock driveway by spilling oil all over it.

Yeah, I get that. Thing is...it's a case of asking yourself, "How scary is this really?". And, when you get down to it...not that much, and it doesn't need a lot in terms of skill or knowledge.

Really, though, it came out of there not being a man in the house (yes, it's dumb and more than a little sexist) to do it and not having a lot of money at the time, so...turns out I was the braver of the two of us.

I mean, I haven't yet gone as far as changing brake pads/discs - I know it's a relatively simple job, and vastly cheaper to do it myself than to get a garage to do it, but the consequences of screwing that up can be rather more serious both to me and to others.

OK, fair enough, but you have to be a real klutz to do that, as well as not thinking the job through before starting ;)

Want a bet? If it’s a diesel then they will 100% check the oil level.

Also OP, most VAG cars can be on one of two servicing regimes, long life and annual. The annual is yearly/10K miles and the long life is every 2 years/(approx) 20k miles. I hate long service intervals and always service my own cars ahead of schedule.

As for oil type (I know you don’t need it now) you can visit the Castrol website which is quite good:

https://www.castrol.com/en_gb/united-kingdom/home/car-engine-oil-and-fluids/motor-oil-and-fluids-finder.html

You absolutely do need to use the correct oil for your car. As for oil consumption, most manufacturers consider anything less than 1litre/1000miles acceptable so it’s not uncommon to have to top up between services, there might be a litre between max and min on the dipstick. As a PP mentioned though many cars won’t use a drop.

They actually managed to drain it out the car without mishap, what went wrong was their attempt to pour it from the drain pan into the empty bottle to take it to the tip for recycling - lent the drain pan on the funnel while pouring it, funnel & bottle unsurprisingly moved, oil all over drive.

When they told me about it I tried not to laugh. I may not have entirely succeeded.

I would've been in pretty much the same state. I'm amazed that people doing this on their driveways don't just use one of these. Absolutely the easiest way to do things - fill it up, put the stopper in, drive to the nearest tip and empty it. No mess at all.