Having your Oil Lab Tested.

[JosephKing]

Greeting to all, (newbie here to the forum) It’s been a while since I did this Lab test on my truck and wanted to share this. I did some research on the forum and wasn’t able to find any open chats about anyone doing the testing. I do not recall where I found the information to send my oil off for testing but I used a Lab Called (Blackstone Laboratories). Has anyone ever used this Lab?

I changed my oil to a full syntactic oil ( Mobel 1, 5w -40) and ran it to 7000 miles before changing. After 7K I sent it off for a study to see how the oil performed. To my surprise the test came back with great results of life left in the oil. (See attached report). You hear all the time with full syntactics you should be able to go 10K on changes. I’m not there yet of course!!. I’m at 8K mile now and I’m going to change it and send it again off for testing. You will see in the notes from the lab it said see you at 9000 mile.

One a side note: I’m always skeptical of test reports, mainly because I don’t get how they see anything in the oil when its blacker than black when you drain it. Lol

Anyone else do this? Thanks in advance for any feedback. Lovin this site and the magazines by the way!!!

 

[Timd32]

I use them for my samples, they are good for my use and responsive. I'm using them specifically for my 18' 2500 6.4 gasser to push the limits a bit, this will not result in a net savings at all based on the cost of the testing and extra fot TBN, I'm just more curious of the trending, so far so good, if I start to see issues I will fall back in line with the book and stop sampling, hopefully before I break something.

We all have varying opinions on the value of sampling, it does add to the overall cost of operation and alot of times may not pay off for a DIY who is sticking to the book regardless of the sampling report, they are dumping it on time or before everytime, and I also agree with that approach as we used to do that in our race engines and kids would reuse our used oil in their street bikes for a long time after we were done with in a week or two with only about an hour of run time.

In my case we do a bunch of industrial oil sampling at work and it's another predictive tool in the box of tricks to look at trends for some high end equipment. So I just roll it into that program I already have set up.

My personal trucks and cars I have not bothered with it as it just adds cost to the service.

So up to you really, there are other labs for sure who can provide some better insight but if you read up on exactly how they are doing the testing there is a TDR article somewhere with some behind the scenes it's pretty neat overall to some people.

 

[Tuesdak]

You don't have to change the oil to do a sample. Get a vampire kit and some 1/4" and small amount of 1/8" tubing. Then you suck the oil sample out the dipstick tube with 3" of the 1/8" tubing on the end of the 1/4" tubing. This way UOA can tell you when to change the oil, and, UOA is cheaper than an oil change.

Samples can show you problems before the become expensive like coolant in oil or intake dirt leaks. Just dumping the oil "often" instead won't save an engine from these problems. Depends on how fast coolant is getting in the oil as to if UOA can help...

 

[Cummins12V98]

Better yet remove the 1/8" pipe plug from the top of the oil filter housing. install a 1/8" fitting with a barbed end. Slip on the appropriate size tubing long enough to place end in oil fill hole. Start engine let it run for a bit to clean out the fitting and line then pull hose out and into sample container. Can't be any easier than that! Maybe $5 in the two parts!

 

[GAmes]

I've been sending in samples for years. I gradually increased my miles until I got to 30,000 mile oil drains. That is when the soot gets above .1%. The remarks say continue use but I change it anyway. I change the filter and sample at 15,000 mile intervals. I use a Fleetguard LF9028 oil filter and a Proguard 7 air cleaner. Silicon rarely exceeds 7ppm. I also have replaced the stock oil pan drain plug with a Fumoto valve which makes taking samples easy. Had I known 15 years ago I would be approaching 1.4 million miles I would have invested in a bypass oil filter system, but the 9028 is nearly as good.