A8 D3 3.0TDi Oil filter confusion ...

[JulianHicks]

Guys; further to my previous queries about oil changes on the A8 3.0 TDI engine, I now find that there are two different oil filters for this engine based on Chassis number.

I've looked in both the Mahle and Mann filter catalogues and they both have the somewhat strange [to me at least] chassis identifier for 3.0 TDI A8 filters as:

Type 1 : to 4E_8_11500
Type 2 : 4E_8_11500 onwards

This seems strange as 1) I thought the chassis numbers were constantly incremented year by year [that is; don't start at 00001 each model year] and 2) since my chassis is 4E_5_11492, I can't believe they took three years to build another 8 A8s

The filters look and apparently have the same dimensions so I can't see how one would identify type 1 from type 2.

Has anyone with a 3.0TDI resolved this apparent issue please?

Thanks - Julian