Actual wear and tear of engine parts running waste oil.

[crazytwo]

I started this thread to see what kind of accelerated wear is happening to engine parts by using waste oil and what can be done to minimize the wear. Some dump the oil straight from the drain pan into their fuel tank and call it good. Others filter while others run the oil through a centrifuge. I hope Mel comments on some of the pumps he has come back as cores. Was the extra wear caused by water, metal particles, acid, carbon? Input from anyone that has seen damage attributed to waste oil would be good.

My intention is not to discourage the use of waste oil but to delvelop methods to minimize wear or damage to your engine. Let the games begin.

 

[leswhitt]

I haven't had to look inside my internals yet but I can say this, I'll never go back to running non-centrifuged oil (I previously used a series of filters with the smallest being 2 mics) again in my trucks. Even though my IDI drank it like regular diesel, I've been amazed at how much grease/sludge my 'fuge will pull out of seemingly clean oil. I centrifuge each 55 gallon batch for a solid 10 hours (20 passes) and I'm getting a huge amount of sludge out of the rotor.

As for the guys that dump it from the pan right into the tank, I think it's only a matter of time before that catches up to them.

 

[smokinpipes]

I haven't run WMO at all (yet), but have run several batches of changed hydraulic oil several times as it becomes available.

When I was running the 60 gallons of AW-32 Hyd. oil I received some months ago, Slim ran good on it. Smelled like an old worn Detroit, but ran fine.
Recently, I ran into an issue with running some hydraulic oil from a Kubota Ag tractor. Oil was very clean, and such... I had it blended 25% #2, 75% Oil. A few days later, my ignition switch gave me trouble, so I was idling quite a bit through out the day. The end result was I was smoking something fierce, had no power, and very hard starts. Upon pulling the injectors, I found 4 of the ports where the injector sits in the swirl chamber, completely covered with carbon, with only a pin hole where the pintle stuck through. Talk about coked city. The injectors has minimal build up. I removed the glows and found two with burnt tips; the rest were okay. Replaced them all just because I already had them out.

I worked to remove the carbon, and soaked the chambers with seafoam, and let sit over night, then reinstalled everything, and ran the truck on a combination of three bottles of seafoam, and Power Service Diesel Kleen, and Marvel Mystery Oil (I did NOT want to pull the heads)...
Shut her down, and hooked back to #2, and she's running good. Now, I have never cleaned the swirl chamber before, and I doubt it ever has been done in it's life... so I don't think it was completely the oil's fault, I feel it was just the combination of never have been done, running oil, and idling a bunch that did her in.

 

[leswhitt]

I haven't run WMO at all (yet), but have run several batches of changed hydraulic oil several times as it becomes available.

When I was running the 60 gallons of AW-32 Hyd. oil I received some months ago, Slim ran good on it. Smelled like an old worn Detroit, but ran fine.
Recently, I ran into an issue with running some hydraulic oil from a Kubota Ag tractor. Oil was very clean, and such... I had it blended 25% #2, 75% Oil. A few days later, my ignition switch gave me trouble, so I was idling quite a bit through out the day. The end result was I was smoking something fierce, had no power, and very hard starts. Upon pulling the injectors, I found 4 of the ports where the injector sits in the swirl chamber, completely covered with carbon, with only a pin hole where the pintle stuck through. Talk about coked city. The injectors has minimal build up. I removed the glows and found two with burnt tips; the rest were okay. Replaced them all just because I already had them out.

I worked to remove the carbon, and soaked the chambers with seafoam, and let sit over night, then reinstalled everything, and ran the truck on a combination of three bottles of seafoam, and Power Service Diesel Kleen, and Marvel Mystery Oil (I did NOT want to pull the heads)...
Shut her down, and hooked back to #2, and she's running good. Now, I have never cleaned the swirl chamber before, and I doubt it ever has been done in it's life... so I don't think it was completely the oil's fault, I feel it was just the combination of never have been done, running oil, and idling a bunch that did her in.

How do you clean your oil? Do you blend with RUG first? If you centrifuge it, how many passes do you make?

 

[smokinpipes]

I don't own a centrifuge, I passed it through a stock filter (5 or 6 micron I believe) as it was pumped from 5gal pails into the stock front tank.; and as ignorant as this is; I actually don't know what RUG is; so to answer the question, no I did not blend with RUG first
It was just diluted down with #2. The fluid was clean when I got it, only a few hours of use, and in operation it had a hydraulic filter installed on the tractor. I filtered it just because I didn't want any sand or anything in the fuel tank to plug up the main filter.

 

[leswhitt]

I don't own a centrifuge, I passed it through a stock filter (5 or 6 micron I believe) as it was pumped from 5gal pails into the stock front tank.; and as ignorant as this is; I actually don't know what RUG is; so to answer the question, no I did not blend with RUG first
It was just diluted down with #2. The fluid was clean when I got it, only a few hours of use, and in operation it had a hydraulic filter installed on the tractor. I filtered it just because I didn't want any sand or anything in the fuel tank to plug up the main filter.

Nha, not ignorant at all, that's my problem for using too many acronyms. RUG is Regular Unleaded Gas, many of us here blend it with our oil and find that it makes the dirt separate from the oil by itself. It's also used to get the viscosity closer to #2 since it's thinner than #2. Thanks for sharing your experience though, every bit of knowledge is helpful!

 

[smokinpipes]

Your welcome, I'll keep my eyes open here to see what others have to say too. I've toyed with the idea of running WMO more regularly, because, well I can get quite a bit from work, but right now I'm a hair leery since I didn't even run 15 gallons and my truck coked up.. kind don't even want to finish the rest of tank after that week long adventure of ripping her apart.. (I just got her running yesterday)

 

[gonecrazyi]

Need to get the motor nice and hot to burn the crap out of the rings. Hook to a heavy trailer and give her hell. She will run like a new truck with a few hours of heavy hauling.

 

[smokinpipes]

Need to get the motor nice and hot to burn the crap out of the rings. Hook to a heavy trailer and give her hell. She will run like a new truck with a few hours of heavy hauling.

I wish it was that easy, she was running so badly that I couldn't see behind me, and just trying to maintain 55 she was running REALLY hot. I tried something similar to where I ran around my block in second gear pushing her VERY hard to just try and get her to burn that crap out, and after about a mile I got the "Engine Temp' Light illuminated on the dash. Let her idle about 5 minutes to cool off, then drove home normally. It took her about 15 more minutes for the elec fans to kick off. I have an old steel 3-horse slant load goose-neck trailer, that dry weighs in at a little over 7,200.. and she doesn't even get that hot pulling her loaded to the gills. The old girl was not happy. A week's worth of elbow grease, and a good swirl chamber cleaning she runs way better now, and lots less smoke but I didn't see her getting better just by running when she was in that condition..
However, I digress, and I'm getting this thread off topic a bit from it's original posting.

 

[sassyrel]

after talking to a engineer,,at luber finer,,he said,,a small piece of carbon,,that would be present in your motor oil,,will NOT wear a inj pump..he said you may think they are hard,,they arent..i was asking him this,,to see if they had a 1 micron oil filter like amsoil "supposedly" has.. he said,,i highly doubt that filter is 1 micron.........thats when we got into the talk about the size of carbon particles,,and how hard they are or arent...he said,, they are trying to develop a 1 micron filter,,to make it a bypass setup like amsoil talks of..he said it is going to take a bit of engineering from them, to get down to that size reliably...your mileage may vary..............

 

[leswhitt]

For burning WMO, these are the stages that I've figured from reading on the net and both personal experience. For the typical home user, #1 is the absolute worst and #7 is getting pretty good. I've run both 3,5,7 and have seen marked improvements each time.

1) "I just dump it from the crankcase to the tank" - Asking for trouble, ticking time bomb
2) "Filter it through regular filters"
3) "Blend with gasoline and filter through regular filters"
4) "Centrifuge for 2 passes"
5) "Blend with gasoline and centrifuge for 2 passes"
6) "Cetrifruge for 10+ passes"
7) "Blend with gasoline and centrifuge for 10+ passes" - Works like a charm

Smokinpipes, I'd drain your tanks, add 20% RUG to what you drained, drain off the impurities, and refilter again. Better yet, I'm coming to the Dream Cruise in August and would be willing to trade you your old oil for some of my "#7" fuel to see if you can tell a difference in the way she runs.

 

[Matrix37495]

I mix mine with 25% kerosene and run it 6-8 passes through the centerfuge. This seems to be working very well for me so far. My pump also flows enough through the bypass that it heats the oil as it filters.

 

[leswhitt]

I mix mine with 25% kerosene and run it 6-8 passes through the centerfuge. This seems to be working very well for me so far. My pump also flows enough through the bypass that it heats the oil as it filters.

I forgot about the kerosene blenders, I'd put kerosene a step below blending with gasoline. The reason for that IMHO, is that kerosene helps reduce the viscosity but it doesn't have the cleaning properties that gasoline does. As for your oil flowing through the bypass, I had the same issue until I learned how to reduce my pump flow so that it pumps a steady 83 psi through the centrifuge and none through the bypass. I don't know how much of a difference it makes if you're doing 6-8 passes but it does give peace of mind that all the oil has a better chance of going through the centrifuge.

 

[smokinpipes]

Smokinpipes, I'd drain your tanks, add 20% RUG to what you drained, drain off the impurities, and refilter again. Better yet, I'm coming to the Dream Cruise in August and would be willing to trade you your old oil for some of my "#7" fuel to see if you can tell a difference in the way she runs.

I've got about 5-7 gallons left in the front tank, and planned on just filling her up with #2, and running that on the freeway to IDI weekend Friday night. For now, running off the rear tank with pure #2.

Dream Cruise? Sounds interesting.. may be interested in that. Again, I haven't put regular black oil into my tanks. I love my old work horse too much to do that. The stuff I have put in with little conditioning, is at worse, mostly translucent; and blended with #2 . But I do have quite the stockade of WMO, and Soy/Canola Oil from work. If you want to trade some, come on out to the farm, I'll hook you up with however much you want. Or better yet, bring your centrifuge, I'll bring the 55 gal drums

 

[Matrix37495]

I forgot about the kerosene blenders, I'd put kerosene a step below blending with gasoline. The reason for that IMHO, is that kerosene helps reduce the viscosity but it doesn't have the cleaning properties that gasoline does. As for your oil flowing through the bypass, I had the same issue until I learned how to reduce my pump flow so that it pumps a steady 83 psi through the centrifuge and none through the bypass. I don't know how much of a difference it makes if you're doing 6-8 passes but it does give peace of mind that all the oil has a better chance of going through the centrifuge.

The reading i've done says that gasoline is harder to ignite (octane is opposite cetane) than kerosene. My truck really seems to like it too. I'm not too worried about the cleaning qualities.

As far as pump flow, i could reduce it but i actually made it go from 2 gpm to almost 10 gpm because i use the same pump to fill my truck...