I recently stumbled upon the fact that, similar to sending a soil sample to the Ag Extension Service, it’s also possible to send a sample of your engine oil to have it tested so one can better understand what’s going on in your engine. The two companies/services that seem to come up repeatedly when I poke around are Blackstone and Amsoil (although there have been accusations that Amsoil uses this service to promote their products). But I have to admit I am intrigued!
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We’re going to be running it on the race car oil to hopefully help identify some sparkles. We can share the report if you’re curious what it looks like. I think @michaelb has done it on his car before as well.
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Yep…interested. What service are you planning on using?
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Please do, very interesting.
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I’d opt for Blackstone.
Military aircraft have no oil change intervals anymore(turbine engines, gearboxes, transmissions), possibly the same for the motorpool(not sure) - they are based on the results of the oil analysis schedule.
Marshall, if you want a fantastic oil far superior to Amsoil - go with L.E.
Per your recommendation lo these many years past, I’ve only used Liqui-Moly products (where applicable) in my car for some time now.
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We do yearly oil reports on our equipment. We used to change it. Now we wait until the lab comes back as issues. Most recent we had oil sample come back with high silica. We changed the oil on those. Basically the silica was from the casting process. I dunno if they got an in experience guy doing the casting clean up or they were trying a new process.
Out of curiosity, and mostly to feel better about what an oil change costs me, what does an oil change cost (approx) on one of your machines you are talking about?
Probably pretty close to 4-5k depending on how much oil it uses & the type of oil. We can’t just drain the oil. We have to pull it into a drum then recover the refrigerant off of it. Then blow the oil out with nitrogen.
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Same here for my road going cars Liqui-Moly and Motul.
LE oils are too difficult to find since they are no longer on 121 the way to Fort Worth but they are far better that Amsoil or that garbage in the purple bottle. Just because something is “over” advertised in a market doesn’t make it a better product…
From what I understand, the trends over a few oil tests are in general a better indicator than a single test.