2021 ram 1500 5.7 hemi; PP 5w-20 5k mi

I'm kicking myself for not getting an oil report sooner so i had a benchmark for this truck. Yet here i am. Just got my oil report. 22k miles on my ram 1500 5.7. I've been consistent changing oil every 5k miles with either 5w-20 penzoil ultra platinum or penzoil platinum depending on what i could get. And mopar filters. Still under warranty so i'm sticking to whatever is spec at the moment.

My iron level came back at 122, and copper is 66. None of my vehicles have ever showed levels that high. I use the truck to tow a 5k pound travel trailer in the summer. And towing season has just started. Really don't want to blow an engine in the middle of traveling. Is it possible this is an anomaly. I plan on running the current oil about 3k then changing it to see what the report will come back. with View attachment 157936 or should i start worrying?

Found this on the Internet. Maybe you should give Pennzoil Ultra Platinum 5W-30 a try and see what happens. The wear numbers look very good for a 120K mile truck:

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I also have read that the oil splash from the crankshaft at low rpm is hindered by the height of the cam in the block and by the cast-in oil galley that runs beneath it. The engine has a windage tray so I do not know how accurate this statement is but the theory seems to support the lubrication issue.....thus the reasoning for the 6.2 oil pump swap. I also suspect VVT added to the issue since it's using some of the volume of oil to fill the phaser chambers in the cam gear.
There's no way they are getting crank splash, there's a huge chunk of the block in the way. They are lubricated by lifter bore leakage, which should be more than adequate for a roller setup.

In talking with @TeamZero (an FCA/Stellantis tech) about this extensively, the issue is primarily a result of improper heat treating on the roller, pin, or both, that results in a "ditch" being created that eventually causes the needles to pile-up and the roller to stop rolling. Once this happens, the roller very quickly destroys the lobe. He posted some pictures of this a while back.

I believe the new updated lifters have larger needles in the rollers.

Keep in mind that the lifters don't wear in miles. A cop car with 60,000 miles on it could have the same engine hours as Joe Blow's truck with 150,000 miles on it. Since the failure mechanism takes time (not miles) to manifest, it's going to appear more quickly in vehicles that accrue a lot of hours in a short period of time. We saw the same thing with the Pentastar head/follower issue at our local dealer, the cop cars were the most affected, not because the issue was more likely to appear at low engine RPM, but because the number of hours those engines accrue is much higher in a short period of time.
 
Gotta thank everyone for the comments on my report. I'm approaching 1k on the current oil (PUP 5w-20). I'll pump out some oil thru the dipstick and send it off to blackstone and see how its trending. Once i hit 3k i'll dump it. I'm leaning towards 5w-30 with a ms-6395 spec so i have some basis that i stayed withing spec shall a warranty issue arise. My 2021 owners manual lists 5w-20 but but has a note "ms-6395 may be used if 5w-20 is not available" . I'll post up the 1k mile oil test when i get it back.
 
Found this on the Internet. Maybe you should give Pennzoil Ultra Platinum 5W-30 a try and see what happens. The wear numbers look very good for a 120K mile truck:

View attachment 158228
I have two UOAs with Pennzoil Platinum 5w20, both with excellent wear numbers (10k intervals) at 36k and 56k miles. This isn’t an oil issue.

I really wouldn’t be surprised it was still a break in issue.
 
I'll be honest, seeing some other issues with 20-up. Seeing weird wear at pushrod/rocker interface. Ball end of pushrod chewed up/lifter pocket worn. Bad wear, that shows up as slight lifter noise., then when pull down, only issue seen is there. I assume lifter noise is caused by metal getting into lifter, as lifters are oiled backwards through shaft/rocker/pushrod. Lifter noise comes and goes. Light lifter tick, not the worse tick like a bad lifter/cam. Seen half dozen now. Never seen this even once before. First one we missed, put cam in...still noise. This would certainly account for high metal in sample.

And I posted about a couple of 22s that broke valve stem at keeper grooves. Had another towed in last week.....beginning to see this is gonna be an issue. All very low miles. Hope it doesnt turn out to be widespread.
 
Here's one that has had 30 and 40W I believe with an issue - this isn't likely related to the 20W. Probably just normal break in but hey, it's under warranty so no worries anyway. Do a few UOAs and see if it isn't dropping off.

 
Run Mobil 1 FS 0W-40 in your HEMI. The 5.7 has identical bearing clearances and uses the same VVT system as the 6.4. Trust me, your HEMI will thank you.
Is the 0-40 going to be better than a 5w30 euro for Wisconsin? Read that the ow40 is closer to a 30 weight?
 
Well i got my 1k mile oil sample back on fresh PUP 5w-20. Looks the iron content in the first test was not an error. After 938 miles (probably 2/3 of this is towing a 5500lb trailer). iron is up at 32 already. thats about .034/mile, previous test was .025/mile. If i use that math to compare the prior iron was 122, i wil be at 168 when i put the same mileage on the current oil.

I will post the blackstone report when i get back from traveling, i cannot figure out how to do it from my phone
 
Here is the blackstone report. You can also see the difference between penzoil platinum and ultra side by side. I took the report into the dealer and had a tech come out and listen to the motor. We dont hear any lifter associated ticking. The motor sounds pretty smooth actually. The service adviser and the tech i interacted with the dealer did not care about the blackstone report nor seem to know what they were looking at. Though i did feel the tech genuinely made an effort to see if he could hear anything. I'm heading out for a trip towing the travel trailer this weekend. By next week i will have about 2k on the oil and will dump it and send out for another test. I put in a magnetic drain plug and some neodymium magnet sticks on the oil filter. I'll cut that open and inspect it next week. I wish i could just say run it till it breaks because its under warranty, my issue is we have a lot of traveling towing our travel trailer this summer out west and don want our vacation ruined stuck on the side of the road with a broken truck with a trailer to deal with.

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Here is the blackstone report. You can also see the difference between penzoil platinum and ultra side by side. I took the report into the dealer and had a tech come out and listen to the motor. We dont hear any lifter associated ticking. The motor sounds pretty smooth actually. The service adviser and the tech i interacted with the dealer did not care about the blackstone report nor seem to know what they were looking at. Though i did feel the tech genuinely made an effort to see if he could hear anything. I'm heading out for a trip towing the travel trailer this weekend. By next week i will have about 2k on the oil and will dump it and send out for another test. I put in a magnetic drain plug and some neodymium magnet sticks on the oil filter. I'll cut that open and inspect it next week. I wish i could just say run it till it breaks because its under warranty, my issue is we have a lot of traveling towing our travel trailer this summer out west and don want our vacation ruined stuck on the side of the road with a broken truck with a trailer to deal with.

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Iron is still trending up if you calculate iron ppm per mile, so I don't understand his "hard to be sure". The lower iron this time seems to be because you put far less mileage on the oil, not because it's doing better (it's doing worse as far as I can see).
 
Iron is still trending up if you calculate iron ppm per mile, so I don't understand his "hard to be sure". The lower iron this time seems to be because you put far less mileage on the oil, not because it's doing better (it's doing worse as far as I can see).
Yes i saw the same thing. Its concerning to me. What i'm wondering is 75-80% of this engine is for towing a 5500lb trailer. Thats well withing the capacity of this truck, but does constant towing in the summer, and short trips in the cold MN winters just making this wear more? I can't really find any case studies with similar use to compare. The example earlier in this thread with the failed cam/lifters had less iron numbers than i so its hard not to worry about the truck.
 
Yes i saw the same thing. Its concerning to me. What i'm wondering is 75-80% of this engine is for towing a 5500lb trailer. Thats well withing the capacity of this truck, but does constant towing in the summer, and short trips in the cold MN winters just making this wear more? I can't really find any case studies with similar use to compare. The example earlier in this thread with the failed cam/lifters had less iron numbers than i so its hard not to worry about the truck.

A lot of guys on ram forum tow somewhat with their trucks, I don't think any of them have increase wear because of it. I don't but I'm not an expert in this by any means.

The "trick" with UOA is not neccessarily to compare your numbers directly to another truck, because they might be running different oil and have different driving style and usage. Instead UOA's should be used to find trends in your specific engine; wear metals should be coming down.

Your engine appears to be well within warranty yet, so you probably have a year or two to run more UOA's and establish better trends then just 2 data points. But if it trends up for too much longer I wouldn't be running it outside of warranty.

Just my 2 cents.
 
Yes i saw the same thing. Its concerning to me. What i'm wondering is 75-80% of this engine is for towing a 5500lb trailer. Thats well withing the capacity of this truck, but does constant towing in the summer, and short trips in the cold MN winters just making this wear more? I can't really find any case studies with similar use to compare. The example earlier in this thread with the failed cam/lifters had less iron numbers than i so its hard not to worry about the truck.
My wife's is used very similarly, our numbers are dramatically lower than yours.
 
given how low other wear metals are, and how young the engine is, its definitely concerning. doesn't seem like a bottom end issue but rather something with steel on steel contact.

from what i've heard, these hemis can have issues with cams and lifters (due to the MDS system) in which case the cam lobes can sometimes get wiped or have lifters fail. being that those are steel parts, this may be an early warning that something in the top end is unhappy. not sure on the copper although that can be potentially something in an oil cooler.

might be worth having the cam inspected before you send shrapnel through the block far from home with a camper behind you. just my opinion though!
Its not so much the MDS because the 6.4 has the same issue, but if your Hemi Idles or sits at a low RPM this seems to be the cause, but I agree I would have this retested. I hope this works out for you
 
Just did a 2,000 miles oil change. Most of this interval was towing a 6klb travel trailer. In the middle of the change a neighbor came over and asked for something, distracted me and i forgot to take sample. Doh! I did cut open the Mopar filter and i'm not finding any metal particles at all. Magnetic drain plug just had a very thin layer of scum on it. I wiped my finger across one side, that is the lighter color on the right side of picture. No particles that i could see. I've had it to 3 dealers with the prior oil reports in hand. 3 Different techs came out and listened to the motor none of them could hear anything. They all commented it it sounds really smooth actually, loudest thing is the injectors. Looking at the filter, and how the truck is running i'm not going to worry about it. Next trip is in a few weeks MN to Utah. Will do another oil change before my return leg in Utah and make sure i get a sample then.

Its it possible my high iron was from the truck mostly sitting all winter and when it was used it rarely got up to operating temp to burn off any condensation in the motor?



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Just did a 2,000 miles oil change. Most of this interval was towing a 6klb travel trailer. In the middle of the change a neighbor came over and asked for something, distracted me and i forgot to take sample. Doh! I did cut open the Mopar filter and i'm not finding any metal particles at all. Magnetic drain plug just had a very thin layer of scum on it. I wiped my finger across one side, that is the lighter color on the right side of picture. No particles that i could see. I've had it to 3 dealers with the prior oil reports in hand. 3 Different techs came out and listened to the motor none of them could hear anything. They all commented it it sounds really smooth actually, loudest thing is the injectors. Looking at the filter, and how the truck is running i'm not going to worry about it. Next trip is in a few weeks MN to Utah. Will do another oil change before my return leg in Utah and make sure i get a sample then.

Its it possible my high iron was from the truck mostly sitting all winter and when it was used it rarely got up to operating temp to burn off any condensation in the motor?



View attachment 163449View attachment 163450View attachment 163451
You’d think you’d see something if the engine was failing.
Guess time will tell
 
4,000 miles and 2 oil changes later Iron has dropped down to 10. Not sure why the 1st two samples had elevated iron. Perhaps from sitting all winter and never really getting up to operating temps when it was used to burn off any condensation? Either way current oil sample has 2500 miles on the oil and all of that was towing a travel trailer. I saw temps as high as 260 at times when going thru the rockies. I also tried Valvoline Advanced Extended Protection and a Fram Titanium filter because it got it onsale much cheaper than the PUP and mopar filter i have been using.
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4,000 miles and 2 oil changes later Iron has dropped down to 10. Not sure why the 1st two samples had elevated iron. Perhaps from sitting all winter and never really getting up to operating temps when it was used to burn off any condensation? Either way current oil sample has 2500 miles on the oil and all of that was towing a travel trailer. I saw temps as high as 260 at times when going thru the rockies. I also tried Valvoline Advanced Extended Protection and a Fram Titanium filter because it got it onsale much cheaper than the PUP and mopar filter i have been using. View attachment 172916
I think your fine! You could of just had tolerances stacked tighter engine just breaking in. My 21 Jeep Gladiator with the 3.6 v6 is currently reading in the 60s Iron PPM and it has 22k miles on the truck doing 7-8k mile oil changes. I'm not worrying about it ether. Just give it time and the levels should settle.
 
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