Help me interpret this blotter test

[wavinwayne]

The oil is GC with 7000 miles/4 months on it. Car is a 2000 VW GTI 1.8T. The spot is 1" in diameter. The oil had been on the card for approx. 2 hours when this picture was taken. The paper is an off-white, so the picture is fairly accurate, color-wise.

 

[yugrus]

I use white business cards for it and let it sit overnight.
The small inner darker circle on your picture is just starting to form. That's where all the bad stuff goes (insolubles, dirt, etc). So your oil is fine in that respect.
There are no radial streaks or "beams", indicating there's no water/coolant there.

 

[moribundman]

Is that picture orange because it was taken under tungsten lighting? If so, you may want to color-correct it (Make it more blue and more cyan). That will allow us to see it better.

 

[wavinwayne]

I went outside & took another picture, this time under direct sunlight. Hope that helps.

 

[Tosh]

In your future, I see that you will have 7000 good miles, followed by 7000 bad...

 

[wavinwayne]

Thanks guys; would anyone else care to interpret this blotter test?

 

[Doug Hillary]

Hi,
yes - it looks good to me!

Regards
Doug

 

[wavinwayne]

I just did the blotter test on my wife's '97 Expedition. I'll post that card's pics tomorrow. This blotter test thing is neat!

 

[y_p_w]

quote:

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Originally posted by wavinwayne:
The oil is GC with 7000 miles/4 months on it. Car is a 2000 VW GTI 1.8T. The spot is 1" in diameter. The oil had been on the card for approx. 2 hours when this picture was taken. The paper is an off-white, so the picture is fairly accurate, color-wise.

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It's upside down.

 

[wavinwayne]

quote:

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Originally posted by y_p_w:

quote:

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Originally posted by wavinwayne:
The oil is GC with 7000 miles/4 months on it. Car is a 2000 VW GTI 1.8T. The spot is 1" in diameter. The oil had been on the card for approx. 2 hours when this picture was taken. The paper is an off-white, so the picture is fairly accurate, color-wise.

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It's upside down.

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GRRRRRR......Stupid me; I knew I did something wrong!

 

[y_p_w]

quote:

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Originally posted by wavinwayne:

quote:

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Originally posted by y_p_w:

quote:

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Originally posted by wavinwayne:
The oil is GC with 7000 miles/4 months on it. Car is a 2000 VW GTI 1.8T. The spot is 1" in diameter. The oil had been on the card for approx. 2 hours when this picture was taken. The paper is an off-white, so the picture is fairly accurate, color-wise.

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It's upside down.

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GRRRRRR......Stupid me; I knew I did something wrong!

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Sorry - old joke told about abstract art paintings, and various ink blot style pyschological tests.

The movie "Seven" has a scene where the clue was on the back of an abstract art piece that a victim's wife noticed was "upside down". There's a scene in the book "The Right Stuff" where prospective astronauts are asked to describe what they see in a blank sheet of paper. One wiseass says, ""But... it's upside down!"

 

[Pablo]

wife walks in and says: "what is that, an egg cell?"

I still don't get why it's so bright orange.

The brown one looks like normal grubby oil.

 

[Gary Allan]

You've got no distinct ring. The stuff just soaks through. I believe that you are in fine shape as far as a blotter test can determine. Tall Paul has done a decent amount of this testing.

OIL

ATF

MTF

 

[TallPaul]

It's nice to see more BIOTG folks getting into the blotters. I think in the past many were so heavily into UOAs they just didn't give blotters much thought. Actually both would be great for learning to interpret the blotters.

I've done a lot of blotters, but am not that skilled in interpretation. Wavinwayne's blotter looks pretty good for 7000 miles. No nasty ring. When I get rings it is around the original blob of oil with a lighter color area beyond the ring. (My worst looking blotters were when I ran AutoRx.)

 

[moribundman]

quote:

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I still don't get why it's so bright orange.

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Tungsten light (from ordinary incandescent bulbs) has a color temperature of about 3200 K. That's warm (yellow, orange, red) light. Pictures taken under incandescent light on daylight film will turn out orange if printed with standard color correction. Conversely, pictures taken in daylight with tungsten film will turn out cold (blue). Digital cameras also have the white balance set to daylight as default (Can usually be changed), so they render different light sources similar to how film does it.

To get neutral looking pictures, shoot them not early during the day (warm light), at noon (cold light), or during the late afternoon (warm light). Also, take pictures in open shade, not in bright sunlight or in the shadow. Open shade on the northern side of a building is perfect. Why's the color temperature of light change during the day? The higher the sun, the less the sunlight is being filtered by the atmosphere. Shorter wavelenghts (blue) get filtered out by the atmosphere more than long lightwaves (red).

 

[GROUCHO MARX]

Well, there goes the need for UOAs.

 

[Pablo]

mori - I understand all that.

The picture is ORANGE - I mean BRIGHT ORANGE - WAY more than normal color temp delta.

 

[wavinwayne]

Pablo,
The orange color of this first picture probably had a lot to do with the poor lighting in our dining room. I took the first picture with a crappy old digital camera on the dining room table under poor lighting. The camera's flash is useless, so I couldn't use it.

This second picture was taken outside under direct sunlight. It is the exact same oil blot as the orange-colored pic.

 

[wavinwayne]

If I had any anti-freeze contamination or excessive fuel dilution in the oil, what would the oil blot look like?

Does the appearance of this oil blot lead you guys to believe I could go longer on this oil?

 

[TallPaul]

From the latest Lube Tips Newsletter (NORIA, a site sponsor):

quote:

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QUESTION: What are common properties of engine oil that blotter spot testing evaluates?

ANSWER: Soot and sludge suspensions, glycol contamination, dispersancy failure, oxidation.

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Unfortunately, it does not tell what to look for.