I don't know what Walmart's doing with their pricing, but based on grade Edge black bottle and Edge EP are practically a $3 price difference or less. Any reason to stick with EP besides the additional certifications? Edge black bottle still has titanium
Castrol Edge EP 5w30 2016 Ford F-150 3.5 EcoBoost
- Thread starter EcoB00ST
- Start date
If you prefer a thicker viscosity, Castrol specs the EP with a higher KVM:
Edge EP: 10.8
Edge: 10.0
The trend holds in their 20 grades:
Edge EP 0W20: 8.7
Edge 0W20: 8.18
Edge EP 5W20: 8.9
Edge 5W20: 8.2
wemay
Site Donor 2023
Edge EP 0W20 also carries MB229.71 if anyone is interested.
EP might have higher quality basestock. That might result in less shearing. This seems to be the trend in EP oils lately.
What percentage was your IOLM at with the 5,000 mi change? I noticed you appear to do a lot of short trips as well as the towing and was just curious.
What percentage was your IOLM at with the 5,000 mi change? I noticed you appear to do a lot of short trips as well as the towing and was just curious.
It was at 50% for this Castrol EP run. I'm at about 23% now with the Amsoil SS 5W30 at approx 7600. I'm going to change it this week and send that Amsoil off to blackstone.
EcoBOOST
Thanks for Original Post and follow-up
I'm in the middle of doing a similar test
I'm currently testing a 2016 F-150 3.5L
I'm testing Amsoil SS 5w-30
The 1st UOA was 5k miles with good results, I planned on doing a 7,500 mile UOA next later this year.
However, based on the distance of your OCI I will probably stretch it to a 10k OCI
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Those numbers look good
I did 8k on the Amsoil SS but changed it in a rush and forgot to pull the sample, even though the bottle was sitting in the driveway next to me. So mad about that. I really wanted to see how the Amsoil did on that run. I'll try and be not so forgetful when I change the Valvoline Extended Protection that's in there now. Only plan to run that 5k.
Not to be the male organ here, but no, you haven't seen useful data on differences between oils with similar driving habits. UOAs are not intended, nor equipped to provide relevant data for what you want. It's been covered by many industry people in depth here, and I proved myself with an analysis of every single test that Blackstone had run (201 different vehicles with over 2.5 million miles of UOAs) on Ford Fusions with the 2.5 MZR engine, that there is absolutely no statistical significance tied to different oils based on the variances in the data. This means everything is indistinguishable from another when applying real methods to the data. When you're talking 1-3 or even 15-20 ppm variance over hundreds of thousands of miles, the confirmation that everything is essentially identical is up there in the 99% correlation. Outside of an engine failure, and at that point, oil doesn't matter anyways, any oil that meets the specs will not be the cause of demise of your engine.Agreed. I've seen plenty of UOA's on here by same person with same driving habits that show useful data on the differences between oils. Overall, wear is near the same but some are slightly better than others. But you can definitely see a difference in longevity between some oils in TBN, resistance to shearing, etc. But if one oil gets me 1ppm less iron than it was all worth it because that's why we're oil nerds that get on a website like this and are truly entertained reading other people's oil analysis.
UOAs are designed to test viscosity, TBN/TAN, and for the presence of antifreeze or other contaminants. Paying for a UOA thinking you're going to determine some magic elixir to make your engine last forever is foolhardy, but sometimes fun. Just don't think you're altering the course of your engine's life. If you want to assess wear, you need a different type of test. They exist, but are insanely prohibitively expensive when you're talking about even a $60 oil change. Think $500+ for a test that will actually tell you anything about wear. Sorry
Well sheet. I missed dnewton3's post the first time through, but it proves my point. I got the macro data (201 vehicles with over 2.5 million miles) for the same engine family, and proved there are no differences based on oil. Any trends linked to mileage carry through (mainly iron) and others move slightly. But in the big picture, using a UOA to assess wear is a guess. Flip a coin when buying spec oils, and save your $38 or whatever the UOA cost is. It will be fine. 
I respect your logic and I understand your point. In honesty, it feels good to see some low PPM #'s. I mean, that's what most of us oil nerds enjoy seeing on these UOA's. I am very curious how different brands will hold up to the shearing tendency of my particular motor. Most 5w30 will go in a 30 wt and come out a 20 wt in this motor. Nothing indicates this is problematic as I don't see wear metals increase even in the most sheared down cases, but this motor has a single 17 mile long timing chain so I'm trying to keep that stretch to a minimum, however I can. I agree in the sense that the PPM's and wear metals are fairly consistent in this motor aside from copper which I've seen vary much more than the others but I think it's benign and more from leaching than friction/wear. Next I'll be watching TBN's to establish a sweet spot for drain interval.Not to be the male organ here, but no, you haven't seen useful data on differences between oils with similar driving habits. UOAs are not intended, nor equipped to provide relevant data for what you want. It's been covered by many industry people in depth here, and I proved myself with an analysis of every single test that Blackstone had run (201 different vehicles with over 2.5 million miles of UOAs) on Ford Fusions with the 2.5 MZR engine, that there is absolutely no statistical significance tied to different oils based on the variances in the data. This means everything is indistinguishable from another when applying real methods to the data. When you're talking 1-3 or even 15-20 ppm variance over hundreds of thousands of miles, the confirmation that everything is essentially identical is up there in the 99% correlation. Outside of an engine failure, and at that point, oil doesn't matter anyways, any oil that meets the specs will not be the cause of demise of your engine.
UOAs are designed to test viscosity, TBN/TAN, and for the presence of antifreeze or other contaminants. Paying for a UOA thinking you're going to determine some magic elixir to make your engine last forever is foolhardy, but sometimes fun. Just don't think you're altering the course of your engine's life. If you want to assess wear, you need a different type of test. They exist, but are insanely prohibitively expensive when you're talking about even a $60 oil change. Think $500+ for a test that will actually tell you anything about wear. Sorry
Rest assured, that when my next UOA comes in, and the iron is 1 ppm higher than the last run, I will certainly trash the name of that oil brand and blame it on the lack of intelligent molecules
And let's be honest. If you had a full-size truck with a Twin Turbo GDI motor, did some towing, off-roading, and a ton of short trip city driving for 5k miles and the UOA came back with wear metals looking like it came from 98 Accord with 3k highway miles, you'd get a little bit of a chub tooWell sheet. I missed dnewton3's post the first time through, but it proves my point. I got the macro data (201 vehicles with over 2.5 million miles) for the same engine family, and proved there are no differences based on oil. Any trends linked to mileage carry through (mainly iron) and others move slightly. But in the big picture, using a UOA to assess wear is a guess. Flip a coin when buying spec oils, and save your $38 or whatever the UOA cost is. It will be fine.
I do have a full-size truck with a Twin Turbo GDI motor and I agree the OP's report looks really good, and agree on the 30wts not staying in grade very well. I overshot my intended 6k OCI by a bit, and while viscosity is a little low, I'm not really concerned. Plus, the OCI before this was the initial purchase, and I have no clue how it was maintained prior. I'll likely do my UOAs once per year just to keep a check on things. I just turned 45k yesterday. My first UOA on the truck from last August is below. Falls right in line with universal averages, and I had a fairly hot E30 tune and lots and lots of boosting on this OCI. While I've mellowed out some on driving habits, it's still driven fairly hard and I may step to the Castrol 0W40 A3/B4 for summer this year. Just for reference I saw around 13.8psi on the stock tune and as high as 21.9psi on the E30 5StarTuning tune. No other mods besides the SB intake, and it ran a ~10.6 0-100 on video so it's definitely not shabby!
Sorry for the harsh wording. Got a little overexcited for no reason. While everyone is free to test as they wish (and I've certainly done my fair share!) I just don't want noobs to think they have to drop basically a double OCI cost every time when spec oil will protect just fine.
and I agree the OP's report looks really good, and agree on the 30wts not staying in grade very well. I overshot my intended 6k OCI by a bit, and while viscosity is a little low, I'm not really concerned. Plus, the OCI before this was the initial purchase, and I have no clue how it was maintained prior. I'll likely do my UOAs once per year just to keep a check on things. I just turned 45k yesterday. My first UOA on the truck from last August is below. Falls right in line with universal averages, and I had a fairly hot E30 tune and lots and lots of boosting on this OCI. While I've mellowed out some on driving habits, it's still driven fairly hard and I may step to the Castrol 0W40 A3/B4 for summer this year. Just for reference I saw around 13.8psi on the stock tune and as high as 21.9psi on the E30 5StarTuning tune. No other mods besides the SB intake, and it ran a ~10.6 0-100 on video so it's definitely not shabby!Sorry for the harsh wording. Got a little overexcited for no reason. While everyone is free to test as they wish (and I've certainly done my fair share!) I just don't want noobs to think they have to drop basically a double OCI cost every time when spec oil will protect just fine.
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Little FYI on where I think my high sodium numbers are coming from... the UOA I had done on another jug of the DXG showed 357ppm sodium in the virgin oil, so that's not concerning to me at this point. I will keep a check on silicon but that was after installing an SB intake, so I know there was disturbance of the intake system.I do have a full-size truck with a Twin Turbo GDI motor
Sorry for the harsh wording. Got a little overexcited for no reason. While everyone is free to test as they wish (and I've certainly done my fair share!) I just don't want noobs to think they have to drop basically a double OCI cost every time when spec oil will protect just fine.
As a side note, I'm going to do some (hopefully) dnewton3 level statistical review of several hundred F150s with 3.5s and 2.7s and will post up that info at some point. It's not a huge priority, but will hopefully shed some light to help better explain our engines' macro trends.
Really. That's actually pretty sophisticated stuff.
Since I've been away from the board for awhile, I'll just come out and ask since I have read enough to know you tend to have some disdain for dumb things. Was this reply being sarcastic?
It was a legitimate question, proper mathematical analysis to generate statistically valid results is pretty difficult stuff. Way above my pay grade.
Well, I can't claim all the credit. I'm going to organize all the data, separate the obvious outliers or ones that noted engine failures, and then leverage the power of JMP 15 to help identify with a 95%CI (may re-run at 99% to see if this changes anything) whether or not there are any differences in the "wear" metals and also the typical things a UOA is actually intended for, and possibly stratify into mileage windows. Then, I'll re-run with every single sample including known engine failures and then statistically test the two groups against each other ("good" vs. all).
The tricky thing may be simplifying the charts enough to make them understandable to the laypeople on here.
The tricky thing may be simplifying the charts enough to make them understandable to the laypeople on here.
How did you get a hold of so much data? Something you have access to through your job? I'm looking forward to it, whenever you get around to it.
Honestly, I was wondering the same thing. It can be hard to read intent in the written word sometimes.