Mobil 1 5w30, 8690 Mi, 2000 Accord F23A4

[OrdnanceMarine]

This is the first oil analysis done on this car at just under 102,000 mi. I'd owned it since new and sold it to my brother earlier this year. Back in June we met up and did some preventative maintenance on the car (hoses, coolant, plug wires, cap, rotor, check and adjust valves, check the timing belts which were replaced at 50k mi, etc.) and all seemed well.

This engine has been run on Mobil 1 since maybe the 3rd or 4th oil change somewhere around 15000 mi and Honda OEM filters it's entire life (my cars now get PureOne's). I wanted to do a UOA to see how things were going since I've been running a K&N cone air filter on the end of a cold air intake and recent reading here and elsewhere made me nervous about dirt infiltration with K&N's ESPECIALLY since this car was run in the Sonoran Desert for 2 years and the Mojave Desert for 5 years. Apparently this isn't an issue with Si of 10.

I was also concerned about my brother waiting so long to change the oil (I had been doing in the 7-8k range) since I probably put the first 2000 miles on the oil with high desert winter short trip driving and a significant chunk of his mileage was in the damp Sacramento Delta winter/spring where he sometimes wouldn't drive it for a week or more. Again, doesn't look it was an issue and he's set to easily go 9000 miles without a second thought and start going beyond 10000 if he wants to continue sampling .

When we had the valve cover off to check and adjust the valves I marveled at the fact that there was no visible sludge and only some dirty oil sitting in the little nooks of the head that don't drain. The cam lobes and the rollers just had a nice polish on them, no marring or scouring and just the slightest visible track towards the center of each contact area. I was impressed and now that I have a UOA that shows great wear numbers (IMHO), I'm very happy. Few things would have made me feel worse than knowing I had passed off a ticking time bomb to my younger brother.

Please feel free to comment. Thanks!

 

[FZ1]

Good run. I would not go to 10k. .02.

 

[Johnny]

Nice report. Has any kind of additive been added to this oil? The only reason I ask is the reading on moly, phosphorus, and zinc. All a little high for the current Mobil 1 product.

 

[OrdnanceMarine]

I asked my brother about that back when I was sending the sample in. He used an opened quart of M1 5w30 that I had sitting on the shelf in my garage for perhaps a year or two that had been the "drippings" left over in the 5qt containers I had used over the past few oil changes. The M1 5qt jug that I had used was probably 2006 production as I have a tendancy to keep about 1-2 oil changes worth of product on my shelf at a time and Wal-Mart would sometimes not carry the 5qt jug forcing me to pay a few bucks extra to buy individual quarts.

I've never used any sort of additive in any fluid going in my cars besides in my gasoline (bottle of injector cleaner once in a very long while) and M1 is all that has been used in that engine for the past 80-90k miles so there shouldn't be any sort of residual.

 

[OrdnanceMarine]

Originally Posted By: FZ1
Good run. I would not go to 10k. .02.


Would you provide me with some insight as to why? I don't want to make a bum recommendation for my brother and don't want to rubber stamp Blackstone's recommendation if there's a valid concern.

Thanks.

 

[Steve S]

Tho oil should do 10,000 miles ,easy.

 

[Pesca]

Originally Posted By: OrdnanceMarine
Originally Posted By: FZ1
Good run. I would not go to 10k. .02.


Would you provide me with some insight as to why?
Thanks.


I will say because after 8690 Mi on the oil, you have the same wear level as on the same type of engine after a 4800 Mi.

And with a TBN of 3.9, you have still plenty to play with, so 1300 miles is not a big deal.
Some will probably tell you to try 12000 Mi or more, but you can sample it at 10000 Mi, keep it in the sump while you wait for the results and see with them what you want to do (dump it or keep it).


I suppose it is the EP M1, right?

 

[FZ1]

Margin for error.

 

[OrdnanceMarine]

Originally Posted By: Pesca


I suppose it is the EP M1, right?


Nope, standard M1 synthetic that used to be $15-$20 at Wally World. Current product is $22/5qt. EP is something like $26 and having what seemed like good results with M1 for the majority of a decade I decided to stick with it. No EP available back in '01.

 

[Pesca]

Nice, really good oil then. Interesting data, thanks for sharing.

 

[chaser06]

I really like your Si number!

I'd go 10k in your situation.

 

[OrdnanceMarine]

Originally Posted By: chaser06
I really like your Si number!

I'd go 10k in your situation.


Got my attention too!

Either the K&N cone filter with over 80,000 miles on it (cleaned maybe 10-20k ago?) is doing a decent job or there's just not much silica in the air up in the Sacramento area for the engine to suck in? The oil filter is a run-of-the-mill Honda oil filter that I bought in bulk a few years back so I wouldn't expect something miraculous from it either.

 

[SatinSilver]

Great report. Interesting to see a uoa on a fellow F23A4. Have you replaced the pcv valve recently?

Another idea is to possibly do a uoa on the atf.

 

[OrdnanceMarine]

Originally Posted By: satinsilver
Great report. Interesting to see a uoa on a fellow F23A4. Have you replaced the pcv valve recently?

Another idea is to possibly do a uoa on the atf.


Yup, we did replace the PCV valve. No need to sample the ATF as this is a manual.

 

[OrdnanceMarine]

Here's a question I could use some help with. Should I expect to see a slight uptick in silicon if I sample at the next change as a result of the small amount of RTV that is used to seal up the valve cover gasket?

 

[Al]

Originally Posted By: OrdnanceMarine
H Should I expect to see a slight uptick in silicon if I sample at the next change as a result of the small amount of RTV that is used to seal up the valve cover gasket?

Maybe. But if the Al and Cr., and Iron don't go up..its not an issue. But anyways....even though you could go further..why??? Oil is cheap and what's the reason to push it? And why bother to do another UOA the next cycle unless you are entertained by it...which many of us are.

Thanks for the good writup and posting the info.

 

[OrdnanceMarine]

Originally Posted By: Al
Originally Posted By: OrdnanceMarine
H Should I expect to see a slight uptick in silicon if I sample at the next change as a result of the small amount of RTV that is used to seal up the valve cover gasket?

Maybe. But if the Al and Cr., and Iron don't go up..its not an issue. But anyways....even though you could go further..why??? Oil is cheap and what's the reason to push it? And why bother to do another UOA the next cycle unless you are entertained by it...which many of us are.

Thanks for the good writup and posting the info.


I agree in that I don't "need" to do a UOA next run but two runs does a lot to boost confidence in the numbers. My recommendation to my brother will probably be to wait until the maintenance required light goes solid and then think about a change the next weekend or something to that effect.

By the way, I know EXACTLY where Elizabethtown is. Got family that has a farm just west of Maytown that's been in the family since the end of WWII. Beautiful countryside through there! There's a chance you knew my Grandfather as he was an engineer and worked locally from '84-'05.