525,000 mile oil changes?

[rmknizner]

While at the Cummins shop today, I saw an advertisment for Cummin's "Centinel" oil management system. This system monitors the duty cycle of the engine and automatically pulls some oil out or the crankcase and mixes it with the fuek to be burned in the engine. One model then replenishes the oil from an onboard tank, the other must be refilled by the operator.



They claim 525,000 miles between oil changes (a little gets changed at a time) and 100,000 miles for filters.



I know this is for heavy duty engines, not our little ISB, but It is interesting to me because of the graphs of oil quality vs. mileage they had. These graphs showed a sawtooth pattern for the traditional oil change routine where the oil degrades gradually then is replaced over and over. The Centinel-equiped graph showed a nearly constant line where the oil was just below the new quality level over the entire 525K mile test. The implication is that a motor with a Centinel-like oil maintenance schedule will spend less time operating with degraded oil, and thus potentially less wear.





Does anybody know if adding a quart of drain oil to a full tank of diesel fuel will hurt anything? I am not sure what the differences between the ISB and the larger engines are that might effect this.



I like the idea of not havng drain oil to dispose of, and my Fumoto drain valve would make pulling a quart out into a small bottle easy.



Cummins has a short advertisement for this Centinel sytem on their website under http://www.cummins.com/na/pages/en/products/genuinepartsandservices/genuineparts.cfm





Bob

 

[juicedcummins]

Keep that crap away from that little rotary-electronic pump!All you'll do is cause yourself alot of problems and money!

Don't mean to sound NASTY but it is better to ask before you try!

 

[jimnance]

Mixing lube oil into diesel

I'm surprised Cummins would recommend that. Years ago drivers would do that and cause problems because of all the contaminents in the used oil. The people at the factory definately recommended against it.



Of course, those guys would take all eleven gallons and put half in each 100 gallon fuel tank so it wasn't very diluted. Sounds like the new Cummins system would add the old oil so slowly it would be pretty well diluted.



Interesting.

 

[klenger]

It sounds like you don't need to replace the oil filter as much, but then the fuel filter doesn't last as long. I wonder if the marketing scheem to the OTR operators is to keep the truck out of the shop and on the road more where it can make money.

 

[jimnance]

Oil in Fuel

Good point Ken. For many long haul companies time is money. If you have a team driving you are basically trying to run 24/7. Any time out for maintenance is lost revenue.



If they can show that a fleet can go the distance using this technologyI'll go for it. A big fleet can put 500,000 miles on a truck in 2-1/2 years so we could have a good solid reading in a relatively short period of time.



All the new trucks use full electronics so I don't see why the application couln't be adapted to the 5. 9 Cummins. Trick is how to slowley meter the oil into the fuel system. Also, some serious filtering of the lube oil would be a good idea.



Lets see. The dilution factor on a big truck going 10,000 miles on a conventional oil change and getting 7. 0 mpg would be 1428 gallons of fuel to 11 gallons of oil would be 130 to 1. Way less than the unscientific 100 to 6. 5.



I could see this scheme working, but filtered oil in the proper proportions would be critical.



They need to prove it to me, but very interesting.

 

[jimnance]

mixing oil/fuel

A quart evrery 35 gallons works out to be about the right ratios. But how do you filter out the heavy metals from the oil?