Black oil after 5,000 miles

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Richard Kim

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2016 2500 5.7 with 110,000 miles. Engine sounds great; no tick (even cold starts). New PCV valve, oil catch can and I keep a close eye on the air filter. I run either PUP or RGT on 5K oil change interval. Experimented with OEM, WIX XP, Bosch, Fram Ultra, Mobil 1, Purolator Boss filters. Oil turns black at 5K no matter what filter is used. I guess I should be happy the detergent is doing it’s job. No oil burn (never added oil between oil changes). I know as the oil adds contaminants and holds them in suspension in the engine, the oil will blacken as a result of carrying them. I know the oil (TBN) might be still good but the contaminants bother me. Opinions? Shorten interval? Burla?


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Burla

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New PCV was just maintenance item, or another reason for changing? If you were worried I'd boroscope the cylinders, look for hard carbon and soft carbon which would be slimey but not like oil, more like sludge. If there is soft carbon could mean air/fuel/spark mix is off, which will blacken oil for sure. Black oil at 5k miles is pretty normal. You can do something like run a cheap oil flush if you wanted to clean it out, I must admit I do this from time to time with super tech. Either throw a cheap filter on or leave old filter one for a 100 mile flush. It really isn't necessary, but I talk myself into doing it every so often. This will work better then a shorter oci, because a short oci still have a lot of oil from old oil change, which is black.

I'd run a combustion chamber cleaner, in this case I'd like to see sea foam through vacuum lines, as a second choice with less risk redline si-1. The perfect time to do sea foam is before a spark plug change. As in complete the entire process, and then do plugs. The only real risk with sea foam is fouled plugs, but the risk is low and usually temporary.
 

fijicorey

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Send a sample in to Blackstone and get a UOA on it and then you’ll know. Post the results on here and our resident oil experts will tell you everything you need to know.

Agreed, the only real way to know what's going on with it is to get it analyzed. I use the same oil and intervals as you and mine darkens within a couple thousand miles. I have a few UOAs up in a separate thread and I have really good results with RGT and PUP
 

HEMIMANN

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Did you buy this truck new? If not, how many miles were on it when you bought it?

Always a risk buying someone else's poorly-maintained equipment. My son is learning this lesson the hard way right about now - the old "dealer-maintained" vehicle spiel without any receipts. ha ha ha Turns out all the subsystems prone to issues on his vehicle had failures - i.e. - they were not taken care of.

Anyway, if poor oil and change intervals were used previously, this explains darker appearance with oil changes now using quality oils. Btw, I noticed this when I changed from Mobil 1 to PUP. Apparently, Shell's marketing campaign about reducing engine deposits against Mobil 1 has some validity to us in the real world. Shell's evidence was the Sequence IIID engine test - which was quite convincing. Many BITOG guys switched from Mobil 1 to PUP at that time, including me. I haven't looked back. Excpet for upgrade to Red Line to bandaid the poorly-lubricated HEMI valvetrain.
 
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Richard Kim

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Hemimann - bought the vehicle new; I was not vigilant about oil changes in the beginning and relied on the oil life monitor so the dealer fill semi-synthetic oil was changed every 8,000 miles. I started doing my own oil changes around 30K and have been changing every 5K intervals

Fijicorey and Tidefan - I am going to run an UOA on the current oil once it hits 5K. I will use Blackstone.

Nov87 - glad to hear you are experiencing the same thing and that your Hemi is running strong.

Burla - the PCV was maintenance. I had the Ram dealer do a combustion clean when I changed the spark plugs at 106K miles. Glad to hear you think this color is normal (makes me sleep better). I intend to do a flush with Kano Kreen at the end of this cycle (I will drain oil for UOA before adding the flush).
 

skbball06

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New PCV was just maintenance item, or another reason for changing? If you were worried I'd boroscope the cylinders, look for hard carbon and soft carbon which would be slimey but not like oil, more like sludge. If there is soft carbon could mean air/fuel/spark mix is off, which will blacken oil for sure. Black oil at 5k miles is pretty normal. You can do something like run a cheap oil flush if you wanted to clean it out, I must admit I do this from time to time with super tech. Either throw a cheap filter on or leave old filter one for a 100 mile flush. It really isn't necessary, but I talk myself into doing it every so often. This will work better then a shorter oci, because a short oci still have a lot of oil from old oil change, which is black.

I'd run a combustion chamber cleaner, in this case I'd like to see sea foam through vacuum lines, as a second choice with less risk redline si-1. The perfect time to do sea foam is before a spark plug change. As in complete the entire process, and then do plugs. The only real risk with sea foam is fouled plugs, but the risk is low and usually temporary.
I agree with Burla but also recommened looking into BG products both crankcase cleaner and fuel system cleaning options if you have not in the past. Either way I think we can agree on getting the entire system cleaned and then utilize conditioners to help keep it clean.
 
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