normal oil results????

[SnM]

what are the normal readings that I should see in my gm 3.8L SC'ed (L67) engine?

Looking at the chart on:

http://theoildrop.server101.com/whatisoilanalysis.htm

It shows copper and silicon's acceptable levels to be 10-30 ppm.

My second oil resutls came in, and I don't have it in front of me, but I remember that silicon went from 31 to down to 19, but Titan labs still says that it is high. Copper went from 45 to 3x something, so I can see why they still said it was high. But shouldn't my silicon level be in the "normal" range now?

also, from search similar engine's results on this site, I found that most people use Blackstone labs, and they didn't seem to red flag the higher silicon or copper like Titan, anybody know why?

so should I take the chart I linked to as being a good idea of what normal should be?

thanks

steve

 

[regalman]

I had a ton of copper in my report, and Blackstone made note of it. They figure it is because the car is still a lower mileage vehicle and it takes a while for the copper numbers to come down.

http://www.belome.com/regal/regal1.jpg

 

[Al]

How about posting the values. Its normal for GM's to have high copper and silicon which should come down with time. You have to look at the other wear metals to see if its abrasive silicon or the sealant.

 

[SnM]

Here are my results from my first test. my second test has copper at 34 and silicon at 19.

the rest of the wear metals from the second test....i'll add it to the chart when i got time.
chromium = 1
iron = 20
lead = 1
tin = 3
aluminum = 3

 

[sbc350gearhead]

What oil is this?

 

[Al]

Well the copper are coming down and that's the key. Aluminum is pretty low so the silicon is not all dirt. I would still check the filter and the duct going to the intake for leakage. Do you have a K&N air filter. The oil appears to be holding up really well. It would be nice to have a TBN reading which would show this for sure. But at 3K miles its obviously this oi is doing fine.

So again trends are the key.

 

[widman]

At 41,000 miles you should not still be having seapage of silicon from gaskets and things, so we should look seriously at the air filter, it's seals, hoses, connections etc. Having said that, there is a counter indicator that would say the silicon is not dirt...... you only have 3 ppm of aluminum. Without specific mineral content of the dirt in your area, I can't say exactly, but in "normal" dirt that is ingested, you should have about 3 to 3.5 ppm of silicon for every part of aluminum. That would mean that about 10 ppm of your silicon is ingested dirt and the other 20 ppm or so is not dirt.
Copper is another story. There are almost NO GM vehicles around here, but there is much written on the high copper levels in them. There is a site I read that told how to modify your GM trust bearings to channel additional oil flow to the trust bearing surface (the combo bearings) to reduce this. Of course the other way to reduce it would be to pull lighter loads, not accelerate as hard. (takes all the fun out but reduces trust bearing wear).
I'd look for an oil with a higher zinc and phos level for additional proteccion in boundary lubrication.

 

[SnM]

thanks for the replies....

I did get a tbn number on my last test, it was 4.3, and this is Mobil 1 10w-30 oil.

 

[regalman]

Did you have to add a quart of oil, or did you do it to help boost the additive package? My L67 had 8,500 miles on the Mobile 1 when I dropped and it had used about an 1/8 of an inch on the dipstick. Does your car consistantly use oil?

 

[SnM]

I added a by-pass oil filter and needed the extra qt to top it off.

I wanted to go 3k on the oil from when I had the by-pass filter installed(6k total on oil, 3k with by-pass filter), but an oil leak happened because of an install oversight. I lost about 2.5 qts of oil really quickly! so, I had to take my sample after 1k miles, after I fixed the leak and before I topped it back off.

 

[SnM]

here is the side by side comparison of my first and last results: