I am a university student and my Passat is the only thing that gets me to class and to my part time job, so money is very tight. I have a 2014 Volkswagen Passat with the automatic gearbox and about 150,000 kilometers. My dad bought it for me when I started university, and honestly I have never thought about the gearbox once. It drives fine, but last week a classmate asked me when I last changed the gearbox oil, and I had no answer. I called my dad and he did not know either. My classmate says if you skip it, the gearbox will die early and I will pay a lot more later. My roommate says that is only a scare story and that I should leave the oil alone because it has worked so far. I did not know who to believe, so one night I read about it online. I opened a page about Volkswagen cars on a Sharjah website to learn how the gearbox and the oil work together. It said old oil can slowly wear the inside parts, and that a small service now costs less than a big repair later. That made sense to me, but my wallet is still scared. Then a coworker at my job told me to look for an Affordable Volkswagen transmission service near Industrial Area 10 and ask them to show me the old oil before they put in the new one. He said a good place will also tell me clearly if the service can wait a few months. I liked that advice because I cannot pay for everything at once. So I have some questions. How often should the gearbox oil be changed on a Passat like mine, by time or by distance? Is it risky to change the oil on a car with 150,000 kilometers that never had it done? Can I ask the garage to do only the oil and skip the extra things, or will they push me to add more? And about how long does it take, and what is a fair price for a basic service? If you kept an older Volkswagen running on a small budget, please tell me what you did and how it has worked for you. Thanks a lot.
