Brief data comparison, JASO MA vs MB vs unrated in UOA

[bulwnkl]

Thought I'd look at some old UOA data I have from my 2012 Honda. I've run Red Line's 10W30 motorcycle oil in it for most of its life. When I started out, they listed JASO MB on the bottles. Later on, they changed to JASO MA/MA2, and in that reformulation I also noticed that molybdenum went from ~650 ppm down to ~425 - 450 ppm. My use was nearly all in the lower Arizona deserts, commuting 75 - 80 miles/day round-trip with almost no surface street riding. I also rode it around for fun, including long trips around the western USA.

Since the metal plates in this bike's clutch are steel, I look to iron as the likely-best UOA proxy for whether there's a clutch wear difference between the MA and MB version of Red Line. I also have some data from Lubrication Engineers' diesel 10W30 here, which had no JASO rating and no API gasoline engine rating. LabOne did all these analyses.

Sadly, the number of miles is not at all equal for the JASO MB run. I didn't UOA every oil change, nor on a fixed interval.

6,400 miles on L-E non-JASO diesel oil = 11ppm Fe, 7.9 cSt final.
1.72 ppm / 1,000 mi

10,000 miles on Red Line JASO MB = 17ppm Fe, 8.9 cSt final.
1.70 ppm / 1,000 mi

5,000 miles on Red Line JASO MA = 6ppm Fe, 8.5 cSt final.
1.20 ppm / 1,000 mi

6,200 miles on Red Line JASO MA = 7ppm Fe, 10.0 cSt final.
1.13 ppm / 1,000 mi

I don't really have any particular point in posting this. It's data that is probably all (or mostly) scattered here on the forum, but I don't recall having put it together before.

If any of you have a better idea of what UOA data one would want to compare to attempt to assess clutch wear, please post it. I won't be doing any more of this sort of comparison work on this motorcycle. For various reasons I no longer put many miles on the bike, so that would in my view be unuseful and pointless.

Is 1/2 a ppm per thousand miles 'excess' wear? Can everyday usage be 'comparable' enough to tease out such a difference? Is UOA repeatability adequate to determine that anyway? I do not think I know those answers, so by all means please use this as validation for whatever you already thought, no matter what that is.
(-;

 

[Jetronic]

The viscosity is a all over the place, for some reason.

But nobody can say any of these oils show excessive iron particles in the oil. I take it the oil is shared for the engine, clutch and gearbox?

 

[bulwnkl]

Yes, it is a shared-sump motorcycle.

Yes, vis is ...variable. I have wondered whether fuel is a component of that. I only get a very basic fuel report, which says "0" on all of these, but LabOne simply says they use a "% fuel meter" to test. I do have a report from a different lab, from early in the bike's life, where fuel showed 3.6% via GC. Again, though, LabOne does not use a GC for fuel and their reports just say there's no fuel.
So... IDK.

FWIW, the UOAs were not back-to-back fills, at all, but they are in chronological order in that the L-E was earlier in the bike's life, then the MB Red Line, etc.

 

[bulwnkl]

Perhaps I should offer another way to consider the ppm / mile comparison.

While it's only ~1/2 - 2/3 of a ppm per 1k miles, it's also 40 - 50% more iron per thousand miles.

So, if you want to just look at the digits, there's almost no difference.

If you want to look at relative accumulation rates, a JASO MB oil and an unrated diesel oil both made 40 - 50% more iron wear per mile than the JASO MA/MA2 fluid.