This is my first post here, I have read and learned a lot from this site over the years and finally decided to become a member and contribute myself. figured i would post my oil analysis first. this is kind of my experiment car and input would be appreciated. input would be greatly appreciated and i will put what i have done with and am trying to accomplish with this car below the analysis report. if you don't mind reading that part before making suggestions that would be great!
blackstone notes: Wow, you ran this oil longer than the last one and still got excellent wear. Better than last time
around, and we thought the last sample looked great. The PC (no charge, sorry again about last time) read
clean at 14/14/11, so your oil filtration set-up is working well. You also had a TBN and a TAN done, and
those both came back all right. The TBN shows lots of active additive left - more than last time - and the
TAN shows an acceptable amount of acidity in the oil. Any TAN less than 7 is fine. No moisture or fuel was
present in the oil. Try 10,000-11,000 km next time!
(by the way, this code thing is maddening, i spent an hour trying to line everything up and it still looks horrendous. no wonder not many people post them like this.)
Code:
MAKE/MODEL: Honda 1.7L (D17)
FUEL TYPE: Gasoline (Unleaded)
ADDITIONAL INFO:
OIL TYPE & GRADE: motomaster 5w30
OIL USE INTERVAL: 9222km
MI/HR on Oil 9,222 8,220 UNIVERSAL AVERAGES
MI/HR on Unit 264,482 UNIT / 236,207
Sample Date 6/4/2015 Location 4/24/2014
Make Up Oil Added 0.317 ltrs AVERAGES 0 qts
ALUMINUM 2 3 4 3
CHROMIUM 0 1 1 1
IRON 4 6 8 8
COPPER 2 2 2 4
LEAD 1 1 1 4
TIN 0 0 0 1
MOLYBDENUM 76 67 57 82
NICKEL 1 1 0 0
MANGANESE 0 1 1 0
SILVER 0 0 0 0
TITANIUM 0 0 0 1
POTASSIUM 0 2 3 4
BORON 124 86 48 42
SILICON 7 10 12 11
SODIUM 104 118 132 44
CALCIUM 2046 2187 2328 2129
MAGNESIUM 8 12 16 147
PHOSPHORUS 758 756 754 706
ZINC 848 869 889 835
BARIUM 0 0 0 0
SUS Viscosity @ 210°F 54.1 56-63 52.1 ISO CODE (2) 14/11
cSt Viscosity @ 100°C 8.50 9.1-11.3 7.92 NAS 1638 Class 6
Flashpoint in °F 395 >365 420 ISOCODE (3) 14/14/11
Fuel % = 2 Micron 303
Antifreeze % 0.0 0.0 0.0 >= 5 Micron 112
Water % 0.0 = 10 Micron 31
Insolubles % 0.1 = 15 Micron 12
TBN 5.6 >1.0 2.8 >= 25 Micron 2
TAN 4.8 5.0 >= 50 Micron 0
ISO Code 14/14/11 >= 100 Micron 0
So this is an newer/old civic m/t and not worth investing in but i used to be doing all this stuff on another car that is actually enjoyable to drive- a 1993 ford Festiva with 420,000km. but then i got married and had kids and needed 'something more reliable'. this is now my 4th of the 7th generation Honda civic because they are unreliable and my daily driver is the festiva again since its only ever let me down twice in 8 years and over 200k. but, all this junk is now on my civic: amsoil bypass filter BMK 13, IPR full flow coolant filter (long story), mechanical water temperature gauge ( the stock ones on 7th gen civics don't go over half no matter how hot they get, thats 1/2 the reason why everyone blows head gaskets without knowing it), oil temp gauge, vaccume guage, oil pressure guage, tow hitch roof rack and local mountains for when i want to be hard on it.
so, one day i was going camping through the mountains with my wife and kid with the car fully loaded, couple of bikes on the back and a full massive very un-aerodynamic roof rack on the top. the roof rack slowed the car down a lot and while i didn't drive it hard 5th gear was only for downhill. i pulled over at a rest stop and shut the car off, 5-10 min later decided to check the oil. popped the hood and got hit with this massive heat wave from the engine. the dipstick was so hot it nearly burned my finger and i think the plastic even deformed when i pulled it out. then all the oil fell right off my dipstick when i got it out. you know how when you drip a small amount of water onto a sloped oily floor and the water stays in a bead and basically flies right off the oil? thats what it was like when the oil fell off the dipstick. that, and having a previous civic with an intermittently working rad fan that would overheat, boil the coolant, blow the overflow cap right off and shoot coolant everywhere all while my temp guage was under half is what caused me to get into all this with a civic.
the reason for the oil analysis part is Honda telling people they can do 16k oci's and 32k filter intervals on dino oil. i believed in 7000km oci's max on gas engines with dino oil 2 years ago, my believes have changed a lot but i still doubt 16k...
so, i got this first oil analysis done the following winter when i changed the oil. it is motomaster 5w20 by the way. right after that i made the decision that for this specific car and my specific requirements of it and what i use it for i should go with a 5w30 instead. i do NOT believe the typical civic in Canada needs 5w30. anyway, first analysis i had a misunderstanding with Blackstone and thought than a TAN of 5 was high, hence the not so much longer second run. they now have told me that anything under 7 is fine.
so i had to wait till the 5w20 i had already put in there was used up and then i put motomaster 5w30 in. finished that oil change and this is the second 5w30 change that i got analyzed here. i ran it from February to June but we had a very very warm winter, not very many days below -25c. so thats the main difference other than starting viscosity. the 5w20 was during the middle of winter with under -30c being common. I only towed a trailer a few times on this last oil change, maybe 8 hours total on the highway is it. installed the oil temp guage about half way through this last oil change and the hottest sustained temp was 230f. so not hot but we hadn't had anything above + 20c ambient temperature yet and no heavy trailers, roof racks or mountains in this one.
so, can anyone educate me on why the 30 weight sheared into a 20 weight when presumably the 20 weight didn't shear much? unless motomasters 20 weight is really heavy and the 30 weight is really light. does oil oxidize more in cold winters with lots of road salt and thicken up whereas it just shears and thins in the summer? the flash point is a bit lower on the 30 weight but without the VOA numbers i cant conclude that there was more fuel thinning it out. so if someone can explain that to me or post links to something informative about that i would appreciate it.
also the air filters in these cars have design issues (as does most of the rest of the mechanical design of the car). thats discussed in other threads here, so i will just say i went with the recommended filter. filters for these civics are recommended based on the gaskets ability to seal or not rather than on filter media performance... every uoa i have seen for a 7th gen civic has a medium-high silicon count. i had the Honda filter in on the first analysis and switched to the recommended denso before this second analysis. i believe (i would have to look at all the uoa's i copied again) that this 7 ppm of silicon is the lowest i have seen for a 7th gen civic! not that a 5 ppm difference based only on one oil change means much but it made me happy, some VOA's i have seen have 7 ppm silicon.
the TAN this time is pretty high, could be because of no road salt and less oxidation because its not winter but i also added 300ml of oil 2 weeks/1000km before the oil change. i had a badly leaking fitting, the engine doesn't burn oil. i know that adding oil boosts TBN a lot (thats the only reason people go a million miles or 200,000 miles on the 'same oil' they changed 25 times) but 300ml in a 4.2L sump is only 7%, it wouldn't boost it all that much would it? (4.2L because of the bypass filter) any thoughts on this?
I realized after doing it that the particle count isn't the most accurate thing from Blackstone, but whatever. i wanted to see what my bypass filter was doing after 181,500 km and like 5 years. apparently not much. still seemed to flow but i never checked how it flowed when i first bought it. i installed a new one after this oil change and will analyze it to see if there is a difference, hopefully much better. when i cut apart the bypass filter it was pretty nasty. based on the particle count and having a 4.2L sump i had
802,200 particles between 2-5um in size
340,200 particles between 5-10um
79,800 10-15um
42,000 15-25um
8,400 25-50microns.
for having a filter thats supposed to be 98.7% efficient at 2 microns that ticks me off but it did have over 180k on it... and Blackstone analyzes like 10ml of oil to get the particle count right? plus its the pore block method... there, i comforted myself.
so, i am thinking of going 13,000km this oil change, what do y'all think? farther? shorter? and why?
the shear worries me a bit but this car specs 20 weight anyway. i can monitor it a bit with my oil pressure guage and oil temp, the sheared 5w30 was giving me about 3-5psi less than the new 5w30 at the same temps and rpms, so i can watch it. i will be hauling a trailer now and then and do at least one fully loaded trip with a bike rack and rooftop carrier through the mountains on this oil change. i was going to keep going with the dino to find out exactly what it could do and if i could match the crazy 16k Honda recommendation which i don't believe is attainable safely and repeatedly. i know i am considered severe service but this is summer, i have 31% larger sump capacity, bypass filter, i drive almost all highway miles, no short trips, and while i load it up and tow i don't drive it hard. it almost never sees full throttle and i speed up and slow down gently. it sees 5500rpm and full throttle maybe 6 times per oil change. i don't believe most cars need synthetic, i think any cheap car can have 6k oci's with dino and last just as long as on synthetic. but an amsoil dealer offered me his signature series for really cheap, and i cant turn that down. he wants me to start on it right away and see how much better than dino it is
so after this its synthetic! see if i can do the 1 year oci's then. but unfortunately/fortunately this will be the last oil change on dino so i want to be sure i know actually how far it can go for a fair cost comparison to amsoil synthetic. ideally i would have like 5 or 6 oil analysis of dino oil first for the comparison to be fair but this isn't my daily driver and i am not as patient as some other members here, especially when offered synthetic for cheap.
blackstone notes: Wow, you ran this oil longer than the last one and still got excellent wear. Better than last time
around, and we thought the last sample looked great. The PC (no charge, sorry again about last time) read
clean at 14/14/11, so your oil filtration set-up is working well. You also had a TBN and a TAN done, and
those both came back all right. The TBN shows lots of active additive left - more than last time - and the
TAN shows an acceptable amount of acidity in the oil. Any TAN less than 7 is fine. No moisture or fuel was
present in the oil. Try 10,000-11,000 km next time!
(by the way, this code thing is maddening, i spent an hour trying to line everything up and it still looks horrendous. no wonder not many people post them like this.)
Code:
MAKE/MODEL: Honda 1.7L (D17)
FUEL TYPE: Gasoline (Unleaded)
ADDITIONAL INFO:
OIL TYPE & GRADE: motomaster 5w30
OIL USE INTERVAL: 9222km
MI/HR on Oil 9,222 8,220 UNIVERSAL AVERAGES
MI/HR on Unit 264,482 UNIT / 236,207
Sample Date 6/4/2015 Location 4/24/2014
Make Up Oil Added 0.317 ltrs AVERAGES 0 qts
ALUMINUM 2 3 4 3
CHROMIUM 0 1 1 1
IRON 4 6 8 8
COPPER 2 2 2 4
LEAD 1 1 1 4
TIN 0 0 0 1
MOLYBDENUM 76 67 57 82
NICKEL 1 1 0 0
MANGANESE 0 1 1 0
SILVER 0 0 0 0
TITANIUM 0 0 0 1
POTASSIUM 0 2 3 4
BORON 124 86 48 42
SILICON 7 10 12 11
SODIUM 104 118 132 44
CALCIUM 2046 2187 2328 2129
MAGNESIUM 8 12 16 147
PHOSPHORUS 758 756 754 706
ZINC 848 869 889 835
BARIUM 0 0 0 0
SUS Viscosity @ 210°F 54.1 56-63 52.1 ISO CODE (2) 14/11
cSt Viscosity @ 100°C 8.50 9.1-11.3 7.92 NAS 1638 Class 6
Flashpoint in °F 395 >365 420 ISOCODE (3) 14/14/11
Fuel % = 2 Micron 303
Antifreeze % 0.0 0.0 0.0 >= 5 Micron 112
Water % 0.0 = 10 Micron 31
Insolubles % 0.1 = 15 Micron 12
TBN 5.6 >1.0 2.8 >= 25 Micron 2
TAN 4.8 5.0 >= 50 Micron 0
ISO Code 14/14/11 >= 100 Micron 0
So this is an newer/old civic m/t and not worth investing in but i used to be doing all this stuff on another car that is actually enjoyable to drive- a 1993 ford Festiva with 420,000km. but then i got married and had kids and needed 'something more reliable'. this is now my 4th of the 7th generation Honda civic because they are unreliable and my daily driver is the festiva again since its only ever let me down twice in 8 years and over 200k. but, all this junk is now on my civic: amsoil bypass filter BMK 13, IPR full flow coolant filter (long story), mechanical water temperature gauge ( the stock ones on 7th gen civics don't go over half no matter how hot they get, thats 1/2 the reason why everyone blows head gaskets without knowing it), oil temp gauge, vaccume guage, oil pressure guage, tow hitch roof rack and local mountains for when i want to be hard on it.
so, one day i was going camping through the mountains with my wife and kid with the car fully loaded, couple of bikes on the back and a full massive very un-aerodynamic roof rack on the top. the roof rack slowed the car down a lot and while i didn't drive it hard 5th gear was only for downhill. i pulled over at a rest stop and shut the car off, 5-10 min later decided to check the oil. popped the hood and got hit with this massive heat wave from the engine. the dipstick was so hot it nearly burned my finger and i think the plastic even deformed when i pulled it out. then all the oil fell right off my dipstick when i got it out. you know how when you drip a small amount of water onto a sloped oily floor and the water stays in a bead and basically flies right off the oil? thats what it was like when the oil fell off the dipstick. that, and having a previous civic with an intermittently working rad fan that would overheat, boil the coolant, blow the overflow cap right off and shoot coolant everywhere all while my temp guage was under half is what caused me to get into all this with a civic.
the reason for the oil analysis part is Honda telling people they can do 16k oci's and 32k filter intervals on dino oil. i believed in 7000km oci's max on gas engines with dino oil 2 years ago, my believes have changed a lot but i still doubt 16k...
so, i got this first oil analysis done the following winter when i changed the oil. it is motomaster 5w20 by the way. right after that i made the decision that for this specific car and my specific requirements of it and what i use it for i should go with a 5w30 instead. i do NOT believe the typical civic in Canada needs 5w30. anyway, first analysis i had a misunderstanding with Blackstone and thought than a TAN of 5 was high, hence the not so much longer second run. they now have told me that anything under 7 is fine.
so, can anyone educate me on why the 30 weight sheared into a 20 weight when presumably the 20 weight didn't shear much? unless motomasters 20 weight is really heavy and the 30 weight is really light. does oil oxidize more in cold winters with lots of road salt and thicken up whereas it just shears and thins in the summer? the flash point is a bit lower on the 30 weight but without the VOA numbers i cant conclude that there was more fuel thinning it out. so if someone can explain that to me or post links to something informative about that i would appreciate it.
also the air filters in these cars have design issues (as does most of the rest of the mechanical design of the car). thats discussed in other threads here, so i will just say i went with the recommended filter. filters for these civics are recommended based on the gaskets ability to seal or not rather than on filter media performance... every uoa i have seen for a 7th gen civic has a medium-high silicon count. i had the Honda filter in on the first analysis and switched to the recommended denso before this second analysis. i believe (i would have to look at all the uoa's i copied again) that this 7 ppm of silicon is the lowest i have seen for a 7th gen civic! not that a 5 ppm difference based only on one oil change means much but it made me happy, some VOA's i have seen have 7 ppm silicon.
the TAN this time is pretty high, could be because of no road salt and less oxidation because its not winter but i also added 300ml of oil 2 weeks/1000km before the oil change. i had a badly leaking fitting, the engine doesn't burn oil. i know that adding oil boosts TBN a lot (thats the only reason people go a million miles or 200,000 miles on the 'same oil' they changed 25 times) but 300ml in a 4.2L sump is only 7%, it wouldn't boost it all that much would it? (4.2L because of the bypass filter) any thoughts on this?
I realized after doing it that the particle count isn't the most accurate thing from Blackstone, but whatever. i wanted to see what my bypass filter was doing after 181,500 km and like 5 years. apparently not much. still seemed to flow but i never checked how it flowed when i first bought it. i installed a new one after this oil change and will analyze it to see if there is a difference, hopefully much better. when i cut apart the bypass filter it was pretty nasty. based on the particle count and having a 4.2L sump i had
802,200 particles between 2-5um in size
340,200 particles between 5-10um
79,800 10-15um
42,000 15-25um
8,400 25-50microns.
for having a filter thats supposed to be 98.7% efficient at 2 microns that ticks me off but it did have over 180k on it... and Blackstone analyzes like 10ml of oil to get the particle count right? plus its the pore block method... there, i comforted myself.
so, i am thinking of going 13,000km this oil change, what do y'all think? farther? shorter? and why?