oil analysis

[bfast54]

Greetings all, I am somewhat a stickler to maintenance on my vehicle since I do a lot of driving and I want to be sure that my vehicle will last as long as it possibly can

I have a F350 dually long bed crew with a diesel motor and I've always change my oil around 5,000 miles-- I use Rotella T6 synthetic --and I was kind of wondering if I was changing it too often ,if I can get more life out of oil ---things like that.

Since I am doing it myself I run about $130 each oil change.

I've been thinking about oil analysis for quite some time ,and so I finally did .

I took a sample of my oil after the vehicle had been runing quite a while ,things like that ....send it in and I was very pleased with the results.

I have just over 5,000 miles on the oil everything came back absolutely spectacular --basically its... no antifreeze, almost zero zero fuel dilution into the oil Basically zero soot,,,all that good stuff ..so the Analysis company that does a lot of oil analysis on heavy Vehicles commercial vehicles things like that..... said go ahead and run it to 10,000 and see what it looks like by then.

So if you run very very good oil and you run mostly highway miles on your vehicle .....it might well be worth while seeing how your engine is doing ---it came back almost no metals, no materials in it or anything.

They included a very detailed report which I'm not going to go into here but it's very concise.. I'm very pleased ....My truck has over 300,000 miles on it.

So this is kind of an informational post or whatever ....you may want to think about it.
I thought about it a long time and I'm glad I did it finally.
By the way it was $29 for the analysis that I got in Michigan and it saved me over $130 in oil and all that stuff like that oil filter ...etc....

When I get back from this next trip I may consider just changing the oil filter and topping it off because I'll be probably around 7000 or so miles Maybe a little more.

[bfast54]

Turtle n Peeps wrote:

bfast54 wrote:
When I get back from this next trip I may consider just changing the oil filter and topping it off because I'll be probably around 7000 or so miles Maybe a little more.

Why? :h

Why not go with the recommended 10K your oil analysis company is recommending? They are the experts and you should follow their recommendations. If you don't trust them, then why use them? If you do trust them then why not follow their recommendations?

Okay Apparently you didn't read it well...

the 10,000 miles that they recommended is that I check it again at ten thousand and see how it is ---now I know darn well that oil filters catch things ----that's their purpose so if I can catch any particles and get rid of them and put a new filter on that --I know I'm money ahead and it's only one quart.

[Trackrig]

Yes, you are changing the oil too often. I had well over 15,000 miles on one oil change and sent in a sample. They came back with the results and said to run it longer which was nice to hear, but I usually change mine when it's convenient someplace over 10,000 miles.

I'm running the T6 in a 2005 Ford F250 with a 6.0 diesel.

After having said that you're changing the oil too often, do whatever makes you happy. I had a 1975 Trans Am with a rebuilt engine that I ran hard. Always tried to change the oil every 1,000 miles, but that was before I knew about synthetic oil.

Bill

[Turtle_n_Peeps]

bfast54 wrote:
When I get back from this next trip I may consider just changing the oil filter and topping it off because I'll be probably around 7000 or so miles Maybe a little more.

Why? :h

Why not go with the recommended 10K your oil analysis company is recommending? They are the experts and you should follow their recommendations. If you don't trust them, then why use them? If you do trust them then why not follow their recommendations?

[C_Schomer]

I started doing the syn/bypass/UOA routine 20 years ago. I used to go 25k w/o a problem. These days it takes me 2-3 yrs to put on 15k miles so I change it at 15k. I also check the full flow filter DP just before I change and it's only 2.5 psi so no need to change that before 15K. It takes time to fine tune your system but it saves a lot of $$ and work. Craig