Need Advice on Sending in Old Oil Samples....

[Idrinkmotoroil]

Hey guys, I change my oil quite frequently, and it has always been my intention to send in some samples for analysis. But since I didn't have any kits at the time of my oil changes I just filled up a couple empty baby food jars with used oil and sealed them up. The baby jars were clean, and I took a mid-stream hot sample as I was draining the oil from the oil pan. I have a Castrol GTX 5w-30 sample and a Havoline Synthetic 10w-30 sample. Both have been sitting in baby jars for a couple months, and I probably have much more oil than the sample kits need. So how do I go about getting a good sample from these filled baby jars ?. Do I need to warm up the fluid and give it a good shake before I put the oil in the sample kits ?, would that help any?. Anything else I can do to get a good representative sample ?. Any info would be great. thanks.

 

[Patman]

I'm no expert on oil analysis but I believe that those samples may not be all that usable at this point in time. I don't think you can transfer the samples from one container to another without having some sort of contamination skewing the results. Plus with them sitting for so long that could possibly change things too.

Terry, what's your opinion on this?

 

[widman]

I don't like to see other jars used and then transferred. How were they washed? It they were air dried, you would have the residual mineral deposits from the rinse water. If towel dried, residual lint and debri. I know of an analisis that showed fine glass particles. After a thorough search of the equipment and everything, they found the mechanic had wiped it out with a towel that had been in his car when the window broke.

 

[Al]

I'm no expert either. But I think they should still be good. There may be some skewing due for extra time to either soak up or get rid of some water, but I would think that would be small. I would warm them up just a little and shake them slightly to distribute the contents. They may not be perfect but they should show some good information.

Widman makes a good point.

[ November 10, 2002, 07:39 AM: Message edited by: Al ]

 

[Idrinkmotoroil]

the bottles were air dried. But yeah I guess if the analysis is that sensitive to very small particles it may pick up everything and skew the results. I wonder what peas and sweet potatoes would come across as on an oil analysis, the guy doing the analysis would surely do a double take if organic material is detected, he, he.

[ November 10, 2002, 09:49 AM: Message edited by: JSIR ]

 

[Patman]

Hehe, my baby son loves sweet potatoes and peas, those are his two faves!

I guess after all this talk, it couldn't hurt to send the samples in, you've got nothing to lose and if you send them to Terry and explain what you did, he could offer some advice.