What I am saying is that most any of the quality aftermarket oils: Motul, Amsoil, Redline, etc; all are better than OEM. OEM is a very thin fluid for a manual; it is actually far closer to an ATF than a standard manual oil. By its very nature it is impossible for it to protect as well as the thicker "premium" manual oils with friction modifiers.
I am not saying OEM fluid won't work... I am simply saying there are other fluids that work even better.
I've had pretty mixed luck with non-oem fluids in the 02q. I do not disagree that, from a protection standpoint, that you can do better than the OEM stuff but from an ease of use perspective it is difficult to find one that covers as wide a spread of conditions (ambient temps and miles) as the OEM oil.
Straight up MT-90 was way too stiff in the cold (bad until fully warmed up), but nice and smooth in the hot months. It has been my go to on VW gearboxes for a pretty long time, but I don't love it in these ones. 50:50 MT-90 and MTL was better across temperature ranges but the shift quality seemed to degrade noticeably after 20k or so to the point where it needed to changed. It was pretty stock like from cold.
Motul Gear 300 was great in the summer months, and not awful but not good in the cold months. Shifts after a cold start on a 0 degree (F) day were pretty slow going for the first couple of miles, which is pretty unacceptable to me, but only the first couple were bad closer to 30 degrees. I didn't run this one long enough to comment on longevity because of the cold shifting quality.
Whch oils have you run, under which conditions, and how did you like them? A company named Specialty Formulations used to make an oil named MTL-R, which is the best I've had in any VW transmission, but (sadly) I ran out and the product vanished. I'm always interested in trying something new if someone has any other good suggestions. The OEM stuff is pretty pricy, so avoiding dumping it for the summer by having a nice fluid that can take miles and cold temps would be awesome. If I lived somewhere warm, I think either MT-90 or Motul Gear 300 would be in my gearboxes year round.
I've heard good things about the Ford XT-M5-QS, but haven't yet had a chance to try it. It's definitely in my short list of oils to try, though.
--Matt
