New Car. 1st oil change. Should I do a UOA?

[j_mac]

Tomorrow I'm planning on changing the oil for the first time in my new Hyundai Accent.
Would it be a good Idea to take a sample and do a UOA on this, the car's first oil change?

What might I learn from a UOA?

I have an old Blackstone UOA kit that I ordered over a year ago, I guess its still good to use, right?
What does it cost to mail it and have the analysis done today?

As a final note, some have suggested here that UOAs cannot really be used to compare different brands of oil. Is this true or am I misunderstanding something?

In 7000 miles the car has not needed any make-up oil. The level is only down a few ounces from the full mark. Does this sound normal or could it indicate a fuel dilution issue? The engine IS a direct injection engine.

 

[yaris0128]

You can just for kicks but your not going to see anything but high numbers from break in anyway. Your choice if you want to spend the 25 bucks. Id wait a few OCI's.

 

[Oil Changer]

Do it with the understanding that some of your numbers will be off.

1. You will never get another chance to test the FF.
2. It's fun to see the properties of the FF.
3. The sample may show a problem with your new engine.
4. With continued UOA's, you will have the most complete picture possible.

The list goes on...

 

[demarpaint]

If you want to get yourself sick do a UOA. j/k. We already know the wear numbers are going to be high. Unless you suspect a coolant leak, I'd wait till I have about 20,000 miles on the car. Use the $25 you save for the UOA for another OC.

 

[scurvy]

I wouldn't bother with a UOA until you've got at least 50k miles on the car. Too much spectrographic noise from breaking in until that point IMO.

 

[Donald]

Another problem is you don't know exactly what oil is in your vehicle. The labs use the kind of oil when comparing the various additives. Also as others point out there will be a lot of wear metals in the sample.

What would be your objective of doing the UOA?

 

[walk23]

Wait until you've gone through a few oil changes. Unless you want a base line on new vehicle wear for your type of engine.

 

[Patman]

I think seeing a UOA of the FF in any car is good information! It shows other people with the same car just how much or how little in the way of wear metals there are at certain intervals. This can help others with the same car in the future to determine when they want to do the first change. Plus it also gives you a good idea on how long you want to run your first few intervals for. If the FF shows very high metals, you might want to do a series of 3k oil changes for the first little while, but if the FF shows a lower amount, then you could go to 5-6k intervals or more right away.

I still find it odd that anyone on BITOG would discourage others from doing UOAs. The more information we get on here the better we can learn. The average person will think UOAs are a waste of money no matter what, but the hardcore BITOG member will never consider any UOA a waste. You can ALWAYS learn something from any UOA.

 

[Bruce T]

I agree with Oil Changer and Patman. No, it's not too early to perform a UOA. Yes, the initial wear numbers will be high, but it allows you to compare this UOA to the next UOA. Even when you install a different oil, you can still watch the wear metal numbers like iron, aluminum, etc, to see how they are trending (up or down).

Later, you can VOA your selected oil as a reference for UOAs. Then you can safely compare every number on the UOA to the VOA. Of course, any remaining FF can sway the numbers for a few UOAs, but it is still informative.