Blackstone - used oil analysis

Yardbird said:

Well, after my rant about my oil report 3 hours ago, I look, and the report just showed up in my e-mail.

I'm well know for sticking my foot in my mouth, so I guess this one more time won't hurt me much...lol

Here goes.... Does my copper look a little high?
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Yardbird said:

That oil change was using a Fram Ultra Synthetic filter, a synthetic blend filter. The oil in the truck now is the same PUP and Biotech, with a Fram Ultra Synthetic, all synthetic filter.

I was wondering if the copper was from the Pentastar notorious dry starts, even though I pre-start prime the engine, or the stupid high temps the engine gets in the mountains and traffic.

Thanks for the comments!

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Burla said:

That is why you need multiple uoa's to see the trends, if it goes down next run as I predict, you should be worry free. Plus aluminum is a dry start wear metal with iron as well, so I don't think this is an issue, but you should consider another uoa as it will tell you a full story on how the engine is trending. I'd try and look up pentastar uoa's to see where you compare at.

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emjohn4 said:

I posted a few of my (wifes) Pentastar analysis somewhere - here it is again (and the 2nd one at 40k is the first one I have on this engine). I've not sampled it the past few changes, but it is due for an oil change this weekend and I will.

The copper does seem high. Mine has consistently been 1ppm. The Pentastar seems to be a nice low wear engine.

Regarding the turnaround time - I have a kit pending that went into the mail on 4/16; still no results. Says 'testing' since 4/22. They must be backed up?

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emjohn4 said:

I posted a few of my (wifes) Pentastar analysis somewhere - here it is again (and the 2nd one at 40k is the first one I have on this engine). I've not sampled it the past few changes, but it is due for an oil change this weekend and I will.

The copper does seem high. Mine has consistently been 1ppm. The Pentastar seems to be a nice low wear engine.

Regarding the turnaround time - I have a kit pending that went into the mail on 4/16; still no results. Says 'testing' since 4/22. They must be backed up?

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Yardbird said:

I've been looking at Pentastar UOAs online, and they all have higher copper than mine in engines with more and less miles on the engine and oil change.

What people are saying is the copper is from the oil cooler. Don't know if that's the case, but it appears my copper number is very good for these engines.

What I'm reading is if it were bearing wear there would be high lead levels also.

Going to keep using the same products until Pennzoil decides to change formulas, then the hunt begins again.

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knightjp said:

The moly in the Castrol Edge report is quite high compared to ****** samples that were tested on BITOG. Any additives were used?
The report makes mention of MoS2.

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HEMIMANN said:

Well, until and unless Conoco-Phillips messes with a good thing, it remains Red Line 5W-30 / 5,000 mile OCI for me. Ever more evidence.

Hoping for a few HPL UOA's here.

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Yardbird said:

I was thinking the small amount of copper in my report may be from LubeGard, but according to a post on BITOG, it's not.

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ramffml said:

Got my last oil report back from BL. No real shock, the 20 grade shows a little more iron than what was trending in the previous reports which were all 30/40 grade oils. The only other 20 grade I recorded was Redline and it had the worst values, but it was also a much younger engine so naturally wear metals would be higher as well vs this report.

I think the take away here is: don't let anybody fool us into thinking 20 grade is better for the engine than 30 grade, these 8 UOA's are a pretty clear indication to me that it loves thicker oil.

I added two additional rows, one for iron normalized to 1000 miles and for copper same thing to make it easier to compare to all your other trucks as most of you guys are using miles. Rest of the units are in KMs. Only wear metals that really make sense to normalize are the iron and copper.

The green cells are "best values" for that row, orange ones are worst.

Copper went down, possibly due to this oil using less/no esters (HPL PCMO is a group 3 base oil) so not as much leaching from the cooling system?

Aluminum and Silicon both went down, but this is hard one to nail down without a VOA of this oil because I've seen some trace values for both of these in VOA's. The silicon is a defoamer and the Aluminum has a reason too that David Ward mentioned which escapes me at the moment, so when we see up to 6 ppm alum in some HPL VOAs and get a report back of 3 in my truck, well, you never know how much of that came with the fresh oil vs wore out. I don't think any of the Aluminum values are a problem, they're all within margin of error and expected values for the hemi keeping in mind that HPL also has trace values in fresh oil as well.

cSt viscosity at 9.1 is low vs the heavier grades I normally run, though higher than the data sheet at 8.8. Not sure how the viscosity can get thicker over time, is that due to the oil breaking down or due to dirty oil?

Overall I'm quite pleased. It performed kind of like I thought it would, being a 20 grade and being their cheapest oil.

Right now I am running my second batch of Euro No VII 5w-30, and will swap that out in the fall for HPL PCMO, but this time I will use 5w-30 instead of the 5w-20.

Reason for using their cheapest PCMO? Because it seems to completely remove my cold start knocking/piston slap or whatever it is. Have no idea why, my current oil is knocking again so going to switch back in the winter to PCMO to see if its the formula or viscosity or combination.

Any thoughts, I'd love to hear them!

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Burla said:

Thanks brother appreciate you. Yeah the main value in the report is there are so few 20 versus 30 that at this point in engine life prove that 20 weight equals more wear. W#hat oil did you replace this with, hpl? And moly is not a known or suspected antagonist for iron, so I think unless there was extreme load I would be hard pressed to find another cause but 20 weight. Give it time maybe the no vii will smooth out later. Oddly enough 10w30 redline was the only redline my truck ticked on, also a no vii formula, I was not expecting that and have no thoughts either, stumped me.

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