To cut a long story short there appear to be hundreds of examples online in various forums of VAG/Audi oil pump failures - balancer shaft smoothing on end causing pump to fail and any number of other engine issues as a result - and unfortunately I've had a similar experience. I'm simply wondering if anyone has taken out a court case/small claims against either VW/Audi/Skoda - depending on the model of car you had where you experienced a similar failure causing expensive to repair damage to engine etc as a result - and on what grounds. Also more to the point were you successful in your claim? Due to a second oil pump failure - after paying £1800 to replace oil pump and blown turbo which resulted from original oil pump failure - I'm pretty much looking at writing vehicle off as scrap but now considering whether it would be worthwhile trying to recover original £1800 spent repairing first oil pump failure which was subject of a technical bulletin to dealers from VW group but never subject to a recall. From what I can gather online - posts from people more mechanically minded than myself - the oil pump should last the life of the engine and in these instances have been failing due to poor design/engineering. That being the case I'm wondering if there's the potential for me to make a claim in small claims court bearing in mind I've never given the dealer I purchased the car from or Skoda the opportunity to rectify matters in the first instance. In my own defence that was because nowhere have I been able to find anyone who got anywhere with them other than perhaps a token goodwill discount off dealer repair costs. That being the case I had the work carried out myself by an independent VW master technician. I'm really interested therefore in if anyone out there reading this has had a similar experience and decided to go to court by way of obtaining a remedy and if so was the claim against the dealer, manufacturer or both? Thanks

Since I bought my 1.4 TDI PD VW Polo in 2002 (yes I know its old but its only done 17,000 miles) I have changed the engine oil every year using the recommended 5w40 semi synthetic 505.01 oil (Millers). I have always bought a 5 litre container of oil but the engine only needs about 4 litres so I always have about a litre left, this builds up so about every fourth year it has built up so I dont have buy for that particular year.I now have a build up of about 3 litres and as it is near to oil change time I went to buy a 5 litre container of the recommended oil only to find Millers have discontinued it and say I should now use their recommended full synthetic (not semi) oil See here Millers Oils XFE - PD 5w-40 Semi-synthetic Engine Oil So now to my questions I presume it is OK to mix synthetic and semi synthetic oils. If the answer to this question is no would it be OK to mix a different manufacturers semi synthetic oil with the Millers oil ALSO I am sure a few years ago I read that if you had used semi synthetic oil for a number of years and you changed to full synthetic there was a chance you could get oil leaks, any truth in this or is it a "old wifes tale". Thanks