Cummins L10, high nit.

[sdan27]

I took an oil sample from the Cummins L10 engine in our Case IH 9250 tractor. The tractor has 6410 hours with 404 hours on the oil. I did an in-frame overhaul on the engine a couple years ago so it probably only has about 1000 hours since then. The tractor does a lot of heavy field work, especially this time of year pulling the subsoiler and chisel plow. We're using Service Pro 15w40 and everything looked good except the nitration was high. Should I worry about that if all other numbers were good?

Iron 31
Al 2
Cu 1
Lead 8
Sili 5
Sod 4
Moly 132
Bor 20
Mag 985
Cal 1513
Phos 1071
Zn 1247

Fuel Soot .3%
Vis 100 C 14.6
TBN 5.56
Oxid 19
Nit 26

 

[The motor guy]

Nitration means the oil has been exposed to high levels of oxygen. So it's been aerated a bunch. Not really sure if it's a big deal or not. Probably not. Lead looks kind of high though. My cummins 6.7L usually shows 1ppm for lead. But it could be normal for your engine. Remember I said kind of high. Probably nothing to lose sleep over.

 

[sdan27]

I think nitration can be a sign of blow-by which, the engine does use some oil but you don't see it smoking hardly at all when its working in the fields. Before I did the in-frame it had a constant blue haze coming from the stack and there was even engine oil leaking out the exhaust manifold. The lead did seem a little high but its about the same as past used oil analysis I've done with shorter time intervals so I'm not real worried. I think if it were a bearing problem, I'd be seeing some Tin as well which I didn't see any of that. I think I might try and do 450-500 hours for the next interval.