It has a K&N cold air kit from a previous owner, I replaced the K&N cone filter with an Amsoil cone filter not long after I purchased it in 2013 and again in the spring of 2018. It seems to be filtering well.
2 Quarts of make-up oil during this OCI, pretty normal for the 8.1L
Oil filter is K&N (great deal on them at $3.99 each)
Blackstone Coments:
Quote
There's good progress in this latest report for your Suburban. Lead is holding steady at an acceptable 17 ppm, and copper is the lowest we've seen so far at 22 ppm. That shows a solid drop in brass/bronze wear compared to previous reports, and it didn't take a shorter oil change interval to make that happen. Top-end metals like aluminum and chrome are still in great shape, and iron is pretty low for the oil change interval. No contamination is present in this M1 5W/30, and the viscosity didn't stray outside the expected range. This 496 is handling the towing well.
I've been dealing with some higher wear metals with this engine. It does a large % of its time towing, especially from 2013-2017. This last OCI was still probably about 60% towing 8,000 lbs. I have not posted here any of the past UOA's except the first one but I'm including all of them in the data. I think the longer OCI back in Sept. 2018 was negatively influenced by 2 things. First, I intended to change it by the OLM, but I think someone re-set it at some point. Normally it would go off around 8,000-8,500 miles. At 9,500 I decided it wasn't going off and changed it. Second, just before the start of this OCI ending 9/18/2017 I changed the radiator out due to a leak around one the oil cooler fittings. This introduced new brass into the system with the new tank cooler.
Since this vehicle didn't seem to like longer OCI's, I decided to switch from Amsoil to M1 HM and stick to about a 5k mile OCI. It seems reasonably happy with this oil and OCI. I'll probably check it again after the next OCI which will be during the winter and with little towing, similar to the 5/7/2018 UOA with the Amsoil. If it still looks fine, I'll probably not check it for a long time.
Code
OIL M1HM 5W30 AMSOIL SS 5W30 AMSOIL SS 5W30 PP 5W30 Uni Avg
MILES IN USE 5.3K 5.1K 9.6K 5.3k 4.2k
MILES 169.7K 164.4K 159.3K 140.0k
SAMPLE TAKEN 8/26/18 5/7/18 9/17/17 10/30/14
ALUMINUM 6 6 6 3 4
CHROMIUM 1 0 1 1 1
IRON 15 10 25 15 21
COPPER 22 38 136 43 17
LEAD 17 17 67 31 10
TIN 0 0 1 2 1
MOLYBDENUM 96 147 169 67 77
NICKEL 0 0 1 0 1
MANGANESE 1 0 0 0 4
SILVER 0 0 0 0 0
TITANIUM 0 0 0 0 0
POTASSIUM 1 1 3 2 2
BORON 53 126 90 22 52
SILICON 12 13 20 11 13
SODIUM 10 13 16 29 34
CALCIUM 1599 3330 3905 1133 2043
MAGNESIUM 704 26 49 1153 223
PHOSPHORUS 739 715 753 914 743
ZINC 839 780 911 1317 900
BARIUM 0 0 0 0 0
INSOLUBLES 0.3 0.3 0.4 0.1
WATER 0 0 0 0
FLASHPOINT F 430 420 435 390
SUS VIS 210 F 61.2 60.7 63.5 73.8
cSt @ 100 C 10.56 10.41 11.19 13.94
TBN n/a n/a 5.4 n/a
2 Quarts of make-up oil during this OCI, pretty normal for the 8.1L
Oil filter is K&N (great deal on them at $3.99 each)
Blackstone Coments:
Quote
There's good progress in this latest report for your Suburban. Lead is holding steady at an acceptable 17 ppm, and copper is the lowest we've seen so far at 22 ppm. That shows a solid drop in brass/bronze wear compared to previous reports, and it didn't take a shorter oil change interval to make that happen. Top-end metals like aluminum and chrome are still in great shape, and iron is pretty low for the oil change interval. No contamination is present in this M1 5W/30, and the viscosity didn't stray outside the expected range. This 496 is handling the towing well.
I've been dealing with some higher wear metals with this engine. It does a large % of its time towing, especially from 2013-2017. This last OCI was still probably about 60% towing 8,000 lbs. I have not posted here any of the past UOA's except the first one but I'm including all of them in the data. I think the longer OCI back in Sept. 2018 was negatively influenced by 2 things. First, I intended to change it by the OLM, but I think someone re-set it at some point. Normally it would go off around 8,000-8,500 miles. At 9,500 I decided it wasn't going off and changed it. Second, just before the start of this OCI ending 9/18/2017 I changed the radiator out due to a leak around one the oil cooler fittings. This introduced new brass into the system with the new tank cooler.
Since this vehicle didn't seem to like longer OCI's, I decided to switch from Amsoil to M1 HM and stick to about a 5k mile OCI. It seems reasonably happy with this oil and OCI. I'll probably check it again after the next OCI which will be during the winter and with little towing, similar to the 5/7/2018 UOA with the Amsoil. If it still looks fine, I'll probably not check it for a long time.
Code
OIL M1HM 5W30 AMSOIL SS 5W30 AMSOIL SS 5W30 PP 5W30 Uni Avg
MILES IN USE 5.3K 5.1K 9.6K 5.3k 4.2k
MILES 169.7K 164.4K 159.3K 140.0k
SAMPLE TAKEN 8/26/18 5/7/18 9/17/17 10/30/14
ALUMINUM 6 6 6 3 4
CHROMIUM 1 0 1 1 1
IRON 15 10 25 15 21
COPPER 22 38 136 43 17
LEAD 17 17 67 31 10
TIN 0 0 1 2 1
MOLYBDENUM 96 147 169 67 77
NICKEL 0 0 1 0 1
MANGANESE 1 0 0 0 4
SILVER 0 0 0 0 0
TITANIUM 0 0 0 0 0
POTASSIUM 1 1 3 2 2
BORON 53 126 90 22 52
SILICON 12 13 20 11 13
SODIUM 10 13 16 29 34
CALCIUM 1599 3330 3905 1133 2043
MAGNESIUM 704 26 49 1153 223
PHOSPHORUS 739 715 753 914 743
ZINC 839 780 911 1317 900
BARIUM 0 0 0 0 0
INSOLUBLES 0.3 0.3 0.4 0.1
WATER 0 0 0 0
FLASHPOINT F 430 420 435 390
SUS VIS 210 F 61.2 60.7 63.5 73.8
cSt @ 100 C 10.56 10.41 11.19 13.94
TBN n/a n/a 5.4 n/a