Got my FJ62's first UOA back from Blackstone... (1 Viewer)

[Lance Lucas]

While doing the first oil change as her new owner, I decided to take a sample and send it off for UOA by Blackstone. I am a religious tester on my Subaru and kinda consider myself to be an oil snob. I have no clue what kind of oil was in it, or how long it had been ran for by the PO.

Viscosity Charts

From those tables, it appears whatever was in it had sheared down to a mid 20 weight! I suspect a lighter Synthetic 5w-30 or 10w-30 was in it, perhaps good ole vanilla M1. Everything in the UOA looks ok, except that iron is a bit high. Even for an iron engine, it's a bit odd to see since the "wear" items aren't usually made of iron.

At any rate, I changed to Mobil 1 5w-40 with Wix 51515. I will be resampling in 3k and see what happens...

Any other regular UOA'ers? I would be interested to see your results!

 

[RockDoc]

Any other regular UOA'ers? I would be interested to see your results!

Not yet, but I might run a couple of analyses on some Rotella syn 0W40 to see how it holds up the the bypass filter, and see if there are any hidden nightmares under the hood. Hope not to become an addict.

 

[Lance Lucas]

Hope not to become an addict.

I lost a month of my life to BITOG

 

[RockDoc]

Since you have some BITOG time under your belt, maybe you can help me out.... Any reason you chose Blackstone ahead of other labs? What does a test run? I think I can have tests run in town here by Finning for ~$35 Cdn....

 

[Lance Lucas]

I kinda went about the whole process backwards. Oiling is a fairly big concern on high power turbo Subarus and a fellow Subaru buddy used Blackstone. He gave me a container and I got curious and sent it in to them. I started reading more about the whole subject on BITOG and went from there. I stuck with Blackstone since they seemed to me the most popular and I figured it would give me more results to compare with. It's $22 per test (+$10 for TBN) and they have really great service. You nearly always get the results the next day and you can get both PDF and hard copies. They send you free containers (last time they sent 16...lol). I send my samples on a Monday via Priority Mail and always get my results on Thursday. If you use a next-day service, they will make their best attempt to sample it that day, as a service for people who are considering a purchase and need info quickly.

 

[RockDoc]

Just got my first analysis back. All looks good aside from a touch possible coolant contamination. No noticable coolant loss though.... Oh well, might do a head gasket indirectly in the next while anyway.

 

[ntsqd]

"BITOG"?

 

[RockDoc]

Bob Is The Oil Guy - a motor oil site that has discussion forums.

 

[ntsqd]

Gracias

 

[NocalFJ60]

as a service for people who are considering a purchase and need info quickly.

I had not heard this before. If you were looking at buying a car, what would you learn from sending in an oil sample? If there are a lot of metals in the oil, that just tells you if the oil has not been change that time or does it also mean something else?

 

[Randy88FJ62]

I was reading a book about bio diesel and they were doing testing like this to check for wear on the engine while using BD100 compared to reg diesel. I think it looks like a fun thing to do and learn about but... Fancy numbers are always great but unless you can actually apply the testing I don't see a use for it.

Can you guys give me an example of how getting different results would affect which oil you use or what type of repairs you did? I think that such a cheap testing method would be a good tool but I'd want to be sure before going head on into a bunch of numbers and tables.

I'm assuming I need to head over to the oil site linked above; can't right now, I have too much work to get enthralled in more addictive tendencies other than LC's

 

[lovetoski]

I am not an oil expert...but I use Blackstone because:

• Their analysis tells me something about oil change intervals (iwhat milage interval is appropriate for my truck and the oil I'm using.)
• You get an early read on bearings that are failing.
• If you have coolant in the oil (which they can tell you) then your HG is failing.

If the metal contents are low, no coolant in the mix, your oil pressure is good, and compression is even and above spec, then you can take some confidence that the engine is unlikely to fail in the near future.

 

[RockDoc]

I had not heard this before. If you were looking at buying a car, what would you learn from sending in an oil sample? If there are a lot of metals in the oil, that just tells you if the oil has not been change that time or does it also mean something else?

I don't have much experience (or interest in testing long-term) but the basics are that different metals will be introduced from different components in the engine, (see here) so if you are seeing high levels of one or two of them, it can point to a particular issue (bearing wear, rings,...). In my case, Potassium, Silicon and Sodium are elevated, and these are all common in anti-freeze...., if you are getting lots of blow-by or your PCV system isn't working right, then you will have a high fuel dilution in the oil. You can also see how the oil is performing- is the viscosity holding up? Are the acid buffers still active at the sample time, or all used up? This can help you determine what is a safe drain interval.

I basically sent in the sample to screen for any abnormal wear issues before I put start putting money and effort into this engine, and see how well the oil I am using (Rotella T 15w40) holds up after a good stretch of use.

 

[Randy88FJ62]

I don't have much experience (or interest in testing long-term) but the basics are that different metals will be introduced from different components in the engine, (see here) so if you are seeing high levels of one or two of them, it can point to a particular issue (bearing wear, rings,...). In my case, Potassium, Silicon and Sodium are elevated, and these are all common in anti-freeze...., if you are getting lots of blow-by or your PCV system isn't working right, then you will have a high fuel dilution in the oil. You can also see how the oil is performing- is the viscosity holding up? Are the acid buffers still active at the sample time, or all used up? This can help you determine what is a safe drain interval.

I basically sent in the sample to screen for any abnormal wear issues before I put start putting money and effort into this engine, and see how well the oil I am using (Rotella T 15w40) holds up after a good stretch of use.

The testing sounds like a great idea. If I did do it though I would have to take the results here for help because I would have no idea that potassium and silicon were in atifreeze...

 

[RockDoc]

If you take a look at the report, there is a comments section where they give you an idea of what it all means That, and any high values are in bold text, so you know what to do some research on.