First oil analysis can you please help decipher?

[Peter_Pan]

Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Tighten all of your clamps. Most would swap out the factory clamps with a hose refit.

There's nothing to indicate an internal coolant leak.

Your wear numbers are noise.

I imagine that your turbo is doing a beat down on the visc.

The engine doesn't seem to care.


He has a 2.4 normally aspirated.

 

[Gary Allan]

Okay ..strike that line.

Something is pulling a beat down on the visc.

 

[Steve S]

So do we agree the uoa looks good and the oil works for the oil change interval. Is the waterpump seal weaping

 

[dnewton3]

I think the UOA shows the engine is fine.

My wife's Villager has always had a small "evacuation" of coolant into the great abyss that I have never, ever been able to find.

But that doesn't stop if from running (182k miles and going strong) and turning in good UOAs. I've learned to simply top off the tank every once in a while, and not worry about it. If something bad was going to happen, it would have done it by now.

 

[G35_TX]

That old Nissan VG in your Villager should have a long life still ahead of it! Keep it up!

 

[wheelsup]

Just an FYI the pic above is not of my car, I just searched Google for an image of the expansion tank of my car.

I can't find the leak so I'm going to do the U/V dye thing, that seems to be the cheapest and easiest way to go about finding a leak if it can be found.

I'm using Castrol GTX this time around but from what I read above it appears as though this Valvoline HM 10w30 seems to work well in my engine so I'll stick with it after the Castrol.

Thanks guys for all the help, I'll post back the findings. Worst case I keep putting coolant in, it's not like it's a lot of money, but I wanted to keep the car for a long time and w/ only 150k on the motor was hoping to get around 300k. I wanted to head off any HG issues now before I had to swap a used motor into my car.

 

[wheelsup]

Originally Posted By: mechanicx
Well it looks like, unless I'm mistaken, your system is a pressurized reservoir so I don't think you should see any loss of coolant unless there was a leak. Maybe you don't have an internal leakage at all, but my point is who needs an oil with sodium in it clouding the issue? Have you seen any milky white build up on the oil dipstick or oil filler cap?


Only a small amount of white deposit on the dipstick when cold out (ie 35F or below) which is moisture as it's not always present. Also normal for my engine. It goes away when the engine is warmed up.

I had no idea oils had sodium in them, I'm not an oil guy. I had thought an analysis would be the quickest and cheapest way to figure out of the HG was blown by detecting coolant but apparently it's dependent on which oil is used. Live and learn.

 

[wheelsup]

Originally Posted By: Pablo
I know where your slight coolant leak is. I can almost see it in the picture. It's your heater line passthroughs. IPD sells seal kits, or they used to.

Same car here. 1996 855. NA. Nautic Blue.


LOL. I can't find any residue around them however. I'll take a closer look when I get back home though. Thanks for the tip if that is it I owe you a beer and thanks for the IPD kit recommendation.

 

[Bill in Utah]

Originally Posted By: wheelsup

I had no idea oils had sodium in them, I'm not an oil guy. I had thought an analysis would be the quickest and cheapest way to figure out of the HG was blown by detecting coolant but apparently it's dependent on which oil is used. Live and learn.


No this UOA WAS useful.

It showed us that you most likely do NOT have a leak. If the oil you had did not have ANY sodium then it would be 100% that you don't have the leak.

But with Valvoline using sodium, we can only be 98% sure.

The wear metals would be MUCH higher, other values would have been higher.

This UOA DID help IMO if I was worried about coolant leaks into the engine.

Take care, bill

 

[Pablo]

Originally Posted By: wheelsup
Originally Posted By: Pablo
I know where your slight coolant leak is. I can almost see it in the picture. It's your heater line passthroughs. IPD sells seal kits, or they used to.

Same car here. 1996 855. NA. Nautic Blue.


LOL. I can't find any residue around them however. I'll take a closer look when I get back home though. Thanks for the tip if that is it I owe you a beer and thanks for the IPD kit recommendation.


I never saw any residue on mine either......here's one test: Get the engine really HOT (with heater off), then quickly turn heat full on and wait just a bit then turn fan full on with your nose near the appropriate outlet....you will get just a tiny hint of AF.

 

[mechanicx]

Originally Posted By: wheelsup
Originally Posted By: mechanicx
Well it looks like, unless I'm mistaken, your system is a pressurized reservoir so I don't think you should see any loss of coolant unless there was a leak. Maybe you don't have an internal leakage at all, but my point is who needs an oil with sodium in it clouding the issue? Have you seen any milky white build up on the oil dipstick or oil filler cap?


Only a small amount of white deposit on the dipstick when cold out (ie 35F or below) which is moisture as it's not always present. Also normal for my engine. It goes away when the engine is warmed up.

I had no idea oils had sodium in them, I'm not an oil guy. I had thought an analysis would be the quickest and cheapest way to figure out of the HG was blown by detecting coolant but apparently it's dependent on which oil is used. Live and learn.




Usually white on the dipstick is not just moisture but anti-freeze. I'm not going to say you have a headgasket leak and since you might be taking short trips in cold weather it could just be a little moisture or the headgasket seals up better once the engine gets hot. I'm not an oil guy either really, but I've been piecing some oil stuff together from here. There is also coolant analysis and some of them may be better at actually detecting engine conbustible in the coolant. You might not have any internal coolant leakage, but if you have a pressurized reservoir I don't think you should be loosing much coolant at all unless it was leaking somewhere. You could replace the pressure cap though just to be sure.