# Changed Oil and Check Engine Light on? Help



## Josh NL (Jul 20, 2020)

Hey, so I just bought a 2019 VW Tiguan 2.0L AWD back in November. I’m used to changing my own oil so I just did so at 5,000 miles. 

Checked up videos on how to do it, it was simpler than any of my previous cars. I went to autozone and purchases the specific filter, and drain plug. 
They did not have the specific oil and no where else did near me. So I used Castro’s edge high mileage 0-20. I checked and it is API graded with what my manual needed. It’s good oil, just wasn’t the VW specific. Anyways, I even had a friend of mine who is a mechanic help me change it because it was the first time, and we just laughed because it was so easy. 

However, after driving it for about 200 meters, the check engine light came on. We triple checked everything, everything was done right as far as both of us are concerned. He thinks the engine may detect it’s not the specific oil so it’s flagging it. 

Anyone have any input?


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## Sagginwagen (Oct 15, 2018)

Did you scan it to what the cel is for? 


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## Butcher (Jan 31, 2001)

It's a wrong assumption that the oil change you did had any effect on the Check Engine Light. That is what happens with most pros. Clients come in, get a service, and then come back and blame the mechanic. 

You need to find out what the code is. Then you can proceed to find out the real problem. 

Using the wrong oil is not ideal and another wrong assumption that any oil is good enough. Get the right stuff and buy an OEM oil, not just anything on the store shelf.


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## VWmechatronic (Dec 17, 2019)

The engine cannot detect what type or brand of 0w-20 oil you have in it, so that answers one of your questions.

Only engine light I've ever seen after an oil change is the Low Level warning. That is not that bad to get, by the way. It would just mean you put in 5 quarts or so of oil when the system really wants to see closer to 6 quarts. This happened to me once recently. No loss of Oil Pressure, so no problem, just warning about low level. Maybe that's what you got??

Its probably true that you don't *technically* have to use the correct VW 508 type 0w-20, but I would change out non-VW508 oil out at 8,000 miles or 8 months, whichever comes first, instead of the 10,000 miles VW says we can go, since VW 508 is there to allow those long oil change mile & time intervals. If you had engine trouble, VW could potentially deny warranty coverage if they found out you used non-vW508 oil, and they can run a cheap $20 spectrogaphic analysis and detect the absence of the VW508 marker element Zirconium to catch you.


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