Running in and service regime on a new Skoda Superb?

I am soon to take delivery of a New Skoda Superb 1.4 TSI (125ps). I hope to keep the car for as long as possible (doing about 16k annual mileage), and was wondering about running in, and service regimes. I plan to follow your running in advice with first oil change at 10k (or possibly a little before). Would you advise changing the manual gearbox oil too? And sticking to the fixed service intervals of every 10k miles, rather than variable servicing every ~18k miles?

Asked on 7 December 2015 by prdisaac

Answered by Honest John
Fine car. Good choice. I used to advise running in the engine, but really, these days, it's a matter of common sense. It is necessary to give it a bit of stick now and again to help bed in the piston oil rings. Change the oil at 10k miles of 12 months, then every 10k miles or 12 months. No one seems to bother to change manual transmission oil these days, so doing so after the first year is ultra cautious and unless you physically watch the guy doing it you can't be certain that it has been done. Will need a timing belt, tensioner and waterpump change, I'd say at 6 years or 60k miles whichever comes first. If you can park the car on the flat on private land, then best to leave it in gear rather than use the electromechanical parking brakes, though these are now much better than first generation as seen on C-MAX and Passat 10 years ago.
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