Blackstone - used oil analysis

[Curmudgeon]

It took a month for my oil report results from Blackstone Labs, I was beginning to think they lost my submitted oil sample.

I seem to remember seeing folks posting a pretty wide range on
turn-around time. I have sent 2 separate samples last fall, each
seemed to take a lot longer than the experiences others have had.

I'm not trying to make a point with this, just thinking I would post
updates as I get them, just to see what a typical and random time
frame turns out to be in this one case.

My thoughts are that Blackstone is generally pretty busy and we
should expect a certain time frame for a lab result. People on YT
sending off 5 samples or maybe 20 samples at a time seem to be
pretty popular. I'm sure it takes time to work through large numbers
of samples and still produce reliable, quality, and consistent analysis.

 

[JHoward]

I seem to remember seeing folks posting a pretty wide range on
turn-around time. I have sent 2 separate samples last fall, each
seemed to take a lot longer than the experiences others have had.

I'm not trying to make a point with this, just thinking I would post
updates as I get them, just to see what a typical and random time
frame turns out to be in this one case.

My thoughts are that Blackstone is generally pretty busy and we
should expect a certain time frame for a lab result. People on YT
sending off 5 samples or maybe 20 samples at a time seem to be
pretty popular. I'm sure it takes time to work through large numbers
of samples and still produce reliable, quality, and consistent analysis.

Yep, absolutely.

 

[Musky Mike]

The true high performance oils are packed with anti wear and extreme pressure additives and base oils that both encourage good wear and are good at guarding again bad wear and also often react with metals such as copper in ion exchange characteristics. This info is in syn thread towards the beginning and throughout it. The bottom line these oils are often worse on uoa's then oils such as otc popular brands. High performance oils are for the extremes, they perform better in the extreme heat or cold or under pressure. In most cases high performance oils are not recommended for 95% of the engines out there.

BUT, as it turns out these AW/EP additives and base oils excel at killing hemi tick for whatever reason. I think this forum has a pretty good alternative as well, instead of paying the $$ for redline, you can save money and still get cam protection and also biotech is good at supplying those additives and base oils but keeping wear low when used with a good oil such as pup. Now people with hemi tick like myself, you can pry redline from my cold dead hand cause I ain't using nothing else, eventhough it isn't the best in wear numbers. The only caviet is in engines with hemi tick in many forms, some cold ticks, when redline quiets that engine, it does lower wear numbers as well. Tick is bad for wear numbers as well.

I'm not an expect, I'm been watching Lake Speed Jrs Youtube channel. Their tests shows less friction does always mean less wear. Hard for me to understand that.

 

[Hootbro]

It took a month for my oil report results from Blackstone Labs, I was beginning to think they lost my submitted oil sample.

They have been like that most of this year of what was usually a 2 week turnaround has turned into 4-5 weeks.

I have seen videos of Blackstone's operation and it is not really scalable for increased workload and keeping the same turn around times. They have a lot of manual labor touching operations from receiving, testing and to generating the report. They have customers that pay extra for priority service that pushes everybody else down that much farther in line.

 

[Burla]

I'm not an expect, I'm been watching Lake Speed Jrs Youtube channel. Their tests shows less friction does always mean less wear. Hard for me to understand that.

anti wear and extreme pressure additives and even the calcium and magnesium used for detergency are all metals. So they use these metals to lower the coefficient friction and they use phos and sulfur and some types of salts to make these metals bind to the host metal such as a piston or lifter whatever. Which is why zddp is anti wear in most oils if not every oil but ALSO a break in additive. ZDDP the p is for phos, mos2 is sulfur 2 and moly 1. Metals plus binders. This plating and cushion is sacrificial it gets knocked off and repopulated constantly, but remember these products stick to the metal, so some of the metal is also sacrificed in the process, but much less if you didn't have these additives, in fact likely to have larger micron particles without these additives. There is a ton of paper in syn thread on coefficient of friction with these additives versus oil.

The problem with oil by itself especially in an automobile application, it cant produce meaningful antifriction properties, it cant survive the extreme temps in these areas and would just get squeezed out and burnt up and carbonize. Engine oil is more for keeping acid out of an engine and helping with cooling, and as proven with every formula a carrier of metals that stick to metal that provide this single function of reducing friction. So I've heard...

 

[tron67j]

So my second analysis, using PUP 0w40 again. When I changed I used my last batch of same oil. Thoughts?

 

[Burla]

Looks like they improved the formula a tad over last one, hopefully that stays. 100-150 more mag and 300 less CA is exactly what I would prefer, boron up as well. As for wear, just young engine stuff, around 40k miles on truck you will start seeing better numbers my guess, nothing out of normal here.

 

[Burla]

What Blackstone said about alum, I thought a little out of bounds, yes it's there but still low. We see this all the time on cold start hemi's.

 

[Curmudgeon]

And like the last time, Blackstone shows a slightly different point in the process...

View attachment 547908

An exciting development!

 

[TunaFresh]

I want to see some more HPL UOA.

 

[ramffml]

I want to see some more HPL UOA.

I know a way to make that happen <hint hint> ...

I've posted my 3 results here, bitog has a fair amount more, all very good reports (some stunning) regardless of the specific formula.

 

[Motoman501]

I'll post my HPL UOA with the regular pcmo 5w-30 but right now I only have about 2500 miles on it.

 

[ramffml]

I'll post my HPL UOA with the regular pcmo 5w-30 but right now I only have about 2500 miles on it.

Please do, I have 12 qts of that exact stuff here on my shelf which I hope to start using in 2 months and would love to see how it fairs in your 6.4.

 

[TunaFresh]

The new Valvoline Restore oil may be good for these dirty HEMI engines.

 

[ramffml]

The new Valvoline Restore oil may be good for these dirty HEMI engines.

I suspect the VRP is a one trick pony though; it cleans well, but the rest of the oil is inferior to stuff like HPL which cleans well but is the complete package: stronger base oils, higher quality VII's (or none at all!), excellent cold start protection, excellent ad packs, long legs to run 20k mile OCI's if you so desire... and so on.

I could be wrong, but the price difference is telling.

 

[Burla]

I suspect the VRP is a one trick pony though; it cleans well, but the rest of the oil is inferior to stuff like HPL which cleans well but is the complete package: stronger base oils, higher quality VII's (or none at all!), excellent cold start protection, excellent ad packs, long legs to run 20k mile OCI's if you so desire... and so on.

I could be wrong, but the price difference is telling.

Does HPL have those video's of it cleaning the bottom rings like the restore and protect? I think this is a specific thing and I personally wouldn't go on running it as an every day oil but rather as needed. Traditional philosophy anything that cleans that good usually gives up something in other areas. I don't recall if it was said what technology is used for Valvoline cleaner? Might an oil like HPL or redline anything with esters also clean bottom rings? Might Valvoline just take the lead because they are the ones marketing it and our guys missed the boat? I don't remember if anything like this was covered in HPL vids. Clean and protect was fairly cheap at wally's for 5 qrt, but they only had the 20 weights and no 5w30. I might have bought one of the rav 4, I'm getting up there on miles.

 

[Curmudgeon]

An exciting development!

View attachment 548189

*Another step in the process!*

 

[Curmudgeon]

*Another step in the process!*View attachment 548744

OK, now I'm getting nervous...

 

[ramffml]

Does HPL have those video's of it cleaning the bottom rings like the restore and protect? I think this is a specific thing and I personally wouldn't go on running it as an every day oil but rather as needed. Traditional philosophy anything that cleans that good usually gives up something in other areas. I don't recall if it was said what technology is used for Valvoline cleaner? Might an oil like HPL or redline anything with esters also clean bottom rings? Might Valvoline just take the lead because they are the ones marketing it and our guys missed the boat? I don't remember if anything like this was covered in HPL vids. Clean and protect was fairly cheap at wally's for 5 qrt, but they only had the 20 weights and no 5w30. I might have bought one of the rav 4, I'm getting up there on miles.

HPL doesn't do a single bit of marketing to consumers. Absolutely zilch, it's a very niche/side project for them at < 5% (IIRC) of their business with all of it being corporate clients.

But HPL is exceptional at cleaning yes. Lots of reports of this on bitog, guys opening their filters and showing the bits of crud it removes etc. Their main oils are so good at cleaning that they do not recommend using them straight in your engine without using an intermediary cleaner product that they also offer first. The idea is you add a quart of their cleaner along with your PUP/Walmart oil and it begins a slower/softer clean and that prevents overloading your filter with crud in a few thousand miles which you would do if you go straight from PUP etc -> HPL.

So their cleaner is less effective than their real motor oils, but its designed this way because the main oils clean too well and that can cause problems on dirty engines.

Valvoline hasn't even heard of HPL so their marketing reads like "we are the only one to offer this kind of cleaning yada yada" but its BS, HPL was there way before them.

 

[Burla]

In all fairness that was oil geek and not Valvoline and I have seen HPL in similar videos. So I give credit where it is do, HPL versus Valvoline versus redline companies doesn't mean isht to me, I appreciate formula and I do at least appreciate the oil geek video and just wondered if other oils will do the same in a video. If you ask me, it seams like Valvoline concentrated on a huge problem as in cleaning the bottom of rings. = very smart, Not sure how an oil guy would think this isn't cool stuff.

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