catodd
Registered User
Just bought this truck last month, did first oil change and sent oil sample to Blackstone....Iron and Lead were high.....should I be worried?
First Blackstone Report
- Thread starter catodd
- Start date
mankypro
Learning Slowly...
Like they say in the recommendations, they need to see trending. Did you do this first oil change yourself? Did you mention to the them the exact brand of oil?
My last UOA Blackstone said to go to 5k from 3k - I'm thinking of maybe sending it in at 4k and see how it does. Do you use higher end oil? I've been using Delvac 1300 myself and Motorcraft filters.
Next change (when it warms up a bit) I'm going to do a flush too...
My last UOA Blackstone said to go to 5k from 3k - I'm thinking of maybe sending it in at 4k and see how it does. Do you use higher end oil? I've been using Delvac 1300 myself and Motorcraft filters.
Next change (when it warms up a bit) I'm going to do a flush too...
PwrSmoke
Full Access Member
Would love to comment specifically, but your Word doc comes through corrupted. If you want to post it as a PDF or a jpg...???
A general comment is that, since you just bought it, maybe you don't don't know the prior circumstances. How long the oil was run, type of oil, whether the PO beat the snot out of the truck, etc. Plus, as Mankypro said, trending is key. Generally, I'd advise not worrying too much at this point, running this fill out to about 3K, and sampling again. That will tell a more useful tale. I have found it pretty easy to stretch out to 5K miles on my truck. Below I have posted an '07 UOA on my truck with a 5300K OCI on Rotella-T CJ-4. TBN was excellent and the oil was just starting to thicken from soot (note the .4 isolubles, which is mostly soot my limit on this engine). I now have a bypass filter on, which should mitigate some of the soot issues. Without the soot, I could have run this oil at least another 1500 miles.
1986 Ford F-250HD 4x4, 6.9L diesel (Banks Turbo Kit since '87)
Current Miles: 134,502
Actual OCI: 5,302/1-yr
Oil Used: 15W40 Rotella-T CJ-4
Oil Filter: Wix 51734 (Powerstroke oversize)
(Universal averages for 3250 mile OCI in parenthesis)
TBN: 9.9
Alum: 4 (5)
Chrom: 4 (3)
Iron: 46 (42)
Copper: 2 (6)
Lead: 4 (1)
Moly: 4 (55)
Potassium: 3 (5)
Boron: 2 (60)
Silicon: 5 (7) (Note- Has K&N Filter)
Sodium: 5 (18)
Calcium: 4059 (2945)
Magnesium: 11 (211)
Phosphorus: 1121 (1126)
Zinc: 1378 (1369)
SUS @ 210: 86.8 (69-78)
Flash: 405 (>415)
Fuel: 1.0 (<2.0)
Insol: 0.4 (<0.8)
Comments from Blackstone: "The 6.9L that powers your 1986 Ford is looking good at 134,502 miles after it's annual oil change. The universal averages for typical wear metals in oil from this type of IH diesel are based on a 3250 OCI. You engine's wear metals match up quite well to those in the universal files indicating normal wearing parts and careful operation of this F250HD truck. 1.0% of this sample was fuel but it didn't hurt anything. The TBN was 9.9, plenty of active additive left in the oil. The viscosity was high due to soot."
A general comment is that, since you just bought it, maybe you don't don't know the prior circumstances. How long the oil was run, type of oil, whether the PO beat the snot out of the truck, etc. Plus, as Mankypro said, trending is key. Generally, I'd advise not worrying too much at this point, running this fill out to about 3K, and sampling again. That will tell a more useful tale. I have found it pretty easy to stretch out to 5K miles on my truck. Below I have posted an '07 UOA on my truck with a 5300K OCI on Rotella-T CJ-4. TBN was excellent and the oil was just starting to thicken from soot (note the .4 isolubles, which is mostly soot my limit on this engine). I now have a bypass filter on, which should mitigate some of the soot issues. Without the soot, I could have run this oil at least another 1500 miles.
1986 Ford F-250HD 4x4, 6.9L diesel (Banks Turbo Kit since '87)
Current Miles: 134,502
Actual OCI: 5,302/1-yr
Oil Used: 15W40 Rotella-T CJ-4
Oil Filter: Wix 51734 (Powerstroke oversize)
(Universal averages for 3250 mile OCI in parenthesis)
TBN: 9.9
Alum: 4 (5)
Chrom: 4 (3)
Iron: 46 (42)
Copper: 2 (6)
Lead: 4 (1)
Moly: 4 (55)
Potassium: 3 (5)
Boron: 2 (60)
Silicon: 5 (7) (Note- Has K&N Filter)
Sodium: 5 (18)
Calcium: 4059 (2945)
Magnesium: 11 (211)
Phosphorus: 1121 (1126)
Zinc: 1378 (1369)
SUS @ 210: 86.8 (69-78)
Flash: 405 (>415)
Fuel: 1.0 (<2.0)
Insol: 0.4 (<0.8)
Comments from Blackstone: "The 6.9L that powers your 1986 Ford is looking good at 134,502 miles after it's annual oil change. The universal averages for typical wear metals in oil from this type of IH diesel are based on a 3250 OCI. You engine's wear metals match up quite well to those in the universal files indicating normal wearing parts and careful operation of this F250HD truck. 1.0% of this sample was fuel but it didn't hurt anything. The TBN was 9.9, plenty of active additive left in the oil. The viscosity was high due to soot."
You gotta trend these findings. Change the oil after 3000 miles and see what it shows. I'd do three or so oil analysis to see what they show over time. I wouldn't get too worried with one report on a truck you just purchased.
Heath
Heath
7bicks
Full Access Member
I am not sure I understand paying for all this testing. What if it keeps coming back the same? Do you stop driving it and rebuild it based on an oil report? If not then why bother testing?
No. You just divert a percentage of your income to your savings account based on the numbers.
mankypro
Learning Slowly...
I use UOA to determine the state of the internals of the engines. In my case I run WVO so knowing if I'm getting any crank case poly is important. Could be the difference between valves, heads and a complete rebuild.
PwrSmoke
Full Access Member
I use UOA mostly to determine the length of the oil change interval. That can take two or three UOAs to figure out for a particular oil and filter and in a particular driving environment. Once I do that, I stick with that interval and check every few years to see how things are doing.
As to reading engine condition, that's harder to do. It's easy to get excited about a slight bump in one metal or another but you have to remember that the report shows metal in PARTS PER MILLION and the condemnation levels are usually pretty high (I think it's close to 200 ppm iron for our engines, for example). Thing is, it's pretty hard to catch the "snapshot" of a failing part in a 4000 mile interval. If something is going bad, it usually does so well within the length of you oil change. Wear metals that fluctuate up or down a little can tell you things about the oil change interval, the oil you are using, how you are working the truck, etc., but seldom do you catch a failing part unless you are sampling every 500-1000 miles. Usually something cacks long before you can detect it via UOA. Not to say you can't, just doesn't happen all that often.
Somebody that knows a particular engine very well and has studied oil analysis can read the "tea leaves" better than the rest of us, but even among the well known labs, those guys are few and far between. Generally, the lab just has "cautionary" and "condemnation" limits for stuff that are gleaned from the engine manufacturers or from just having seen so many tests.
One thing NOT to do is to start switching oil brands right and left. Every time you switch, that first change is worthless for evaluation because you still have some of the old oil in the mix and it skews the results. The next one after the change, and the ones after, will give you valid readings.
Another thing is that a regular UOA won't tell you all that much about filtration. The results you get are via a spectrometer that is biased towards identifying tiny particulates (almost colloidal) that your oil filter has no hope of catching. If you want to know how much gunk is really in an engine, you have to have a particle count done. I recently had contaminant analysis done to check the efficiency of my filtration, before and after a bypass filter installation. The regular UOA results barely changed (they did trend downward some) but the particle count was reduced 70 percent for particles above 2 microns.
As to reading engine condition, that's harder to do. It's easy to get excited about a slight bump in one metal or another but you have to remember that the report shows metal in PARTS PER MILLION and the condemnation levels are usually pretty high (I think it's close to 200 ppm iron for our engines, for example). Thing is, it's pretty hard to catch the "snapshot" of a failing part in a 4000 mile interval. If something is going bad, it usually does so well within the length of you oil change. Wear metals that fluctuate up or down a little can tell you things about the oil change interval, the oil you are using, how you are working the truck, etc., but seldom do you catch a failing part unless you are sampling every 500-1000 miles. Usually something cacks long before you can detect it via UOA. Not to say you can't, just doesn't happen all that often.
Somebody that knows a particular engine very well and has studied oil analysis can read the "tea leaves" better than the rest of us, but even among the well known labs, those guys are few and far between. Generally, the lab just has "cautionary" and "condemnation" limits for stuff that are gleaned from the engine manufacturers or from just having seen so many tests.
One thing NOT to do is to start switching oil brands right and left. Every time you switch, that first change is worthless for evaluation because you still have some of the old oil in the mix and it skews the results. The next one after the change, and the ones after, will give you valid readings.
Another thing is that a regular UOA won't tell you all that much about filtration. The results you get are via a spectrometer that is biased towards identifying tiny particulates (almost colloidal) that your oil filter has no hope of catching. If you want to know how much gunk is really in an engine, you have to have a particle count done. I recently had contaminant analysis done to check the efficiency of my filtration, before and after a bypass filter installation. The regular UOA results barely changed (they did trend downward some) but the particle count was reduced 70 percent for particles above 2 microns.
kas83
Full Access Member
Do a couple of changes and samples, and see how things go. If the numbers keep rising, you most likely have problems. Some motors will have higher wear metal levels from the day they are built, and run for several hundred thousand miles without a hitch. If that's the case here, the numbers will stay consistent, although slightly elevated, over time.
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