But when it's BS, any possibility, no matter how minute, that they could be blamed for something, someone here will voice it. Even if it's a 0.0000000001% chance. And a bunch of other people will then chime in with completely inaccurate statements about things like "their element results are always low" or "they always report low viscosity" or some such heresay. They read someone else saying these things, and without doing any fact-checking, repeat it as "fact."
Let's not get carried away with hyperbole here.
- People (primarily myself and
@kschachn) often point out that Blackstone's fuel figure is wildly inaccurate. That's not a dig at the lab, it's a factual comment based on the fact they don't measure fuel dilution using Gas Chromatography. That's a decision they made as a lab and board members should be made aware of it. This has been brought to the fore more often recently because of the surge in DI vehicles on here, which, as you know, fuel dilute far more than their port injected siblings.
- Lab error happens. When you see results that are wildly inconsistent with either previous results or what you were expecting, it's not uncommon to request the lab to re-run the sample. We've had people do this in the past and the results came back as they were expected. This could be the sample getting mixed-up, the results getting mixed-up...etc, it happens. Yes, we see more of these with Blackstone because we see more reports from Blackstone.
- Viscosity is often low because fuel is improperly factored into interpretation, that's more of a board issue than it is a Blackstone issue, but it is one that is predicated on the knowledge that their fuel dilution figure is going to be wrong, which, as I pointed out, has historically not been the case.
- Different labs will have variation in their results. This could be elemental analysis, viscosity...etc. There was a member that made a spreadsheet that compared several of the labs with samples from the same oil sent to them. The infatuation with UOA's and their abuse/misuse drives some of this commentary; obsession over minutiae which is outside the scope of accuracy for the tool.
That said, reacting as you have here to my comments isn't constructive, despite my efforts at making my remark amusing/fun with the "lol". Blackstone may have messed up the sample, it happens, other labs have messed up samples too,
but this sample was done by Blackstone. They might have buggered something up and it would be silly to dismiss that as a possibility just because you are a fan of their services, have some relationship with them, or some other vested interest in preserving some sort of perception of perfection that applies to their services, which doesn't accurately represent:
A) The value/quality one should expect in a $20 UOA
B) The history of reports on here that have had to be re-run
There is absolutely nothing wrong with recognizing that imperfection is going to happen in something you pay $20 for, which is cheaper than other labs that use GC, and those other labs also make mistakes. Getting offended does nobody any favours.