Pictures of what's in New Oil

[Stinky Peterson]

quote:

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Originally posted by T-Keith:
So how much oil does it take to get the levels in these pictures? An ounce, a quart? This seems like crucial information. How about posting the brands and weights?

Your leaving out a lot of information if your trying to prove something.

-T

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Keith

First off I'm not trying to prove anything, just trying to share information.

If you go to pbase website I have since posted the reports showing the complete report. I was reluctant to do this because some will think I am trying to get free advertising for my company's lab when I am not.

As for volume did you look at the Power Point presentation? It shows how much oil is use, it's less than 30 mL.

The reason I didn't list the brand and weights is because someone is sure enough going to say "I'm not going to buy that brand because it's dirty" and then some oil blender will be ****** off. Fact is I have not identified one brand that is dirtier or cleaner than the others. I have not yet found an oil that meets our fill spec without additional filtering. You will notice there is a sample of Cat oil that came from our bulk tank and it too has a high particle count, it has also already had some additional filtering but is not yet to the level where we can use it. The samples of the 10W30, 5W30, 15W50, and 10W40 came from quart cans. The others from bulk tanks or barrels. Only one of these was a synthetic.

If you don't want to accept this then don't, I really don't care. Some of you will use the information and maybe get a little longer life out out your engine. The rest will keep dumping contaminated oil into your filters where it gets a free ride into your bearings.

Stinky

 

[Pablo]

Motorbike - unless I'm misreading the report, the posted report on virgin Mobil 10w30 shows antifreeze.

 

[Stinky Peterson]

quote:

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Originally posted by Pablo:
I tried to scan the procedure and the volume of starting oil didn't jump out at me.

This may PIZZ off a whole bunch of people, but if the volume of oil is 100ml or less, I'll call: BULLSHEET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

PS: Why would new M1 10w30 have antifreeze?

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I'm trying to answer these question but there are a lot so I may miss some.

I'm not sure what you mean by you statement about being less than 100mL? We use a little less than 30mL when we do this examination.

As for antifreeze - the most commonly used test for glycol looks for a 1,2 diol moiety. Ethylene glycol's proper name is 1,2 Ethanediol, the are many other diols that exist and some are used in oil additives or possibly as part of the oil's structure. In other words the test isn't specific for antifreeze so other chemicals can cause a false positive. We mention this because on low hour samples we can still detect these diols so we want people to know that they may not have a coolant leak even though the report says positive or trace antifreeze. In most cases this test is so sensitive that we detect the coolant in 5 or 6 samples before the mechanics can find the leak. We don't want to jump the gun as send them on a wild goose chase.

Stinky

 

[Motorbike]

Thanks again for the great info the great majority of us appreciates

Used the word great twice ... nope three times

 

[Pablo]

STinky - despite your name your aren't smelling the joint up!

Your answer on Mobil makes sense to me.

On the volume - I guess I'm just intellectually (?) struggling with that much "stuff" in less than 30 ml of oil. I'm not throwing rocks....so don't take my BS comment too deeply. My thoughts now are that if that stuff came from only 30 ml of oil...most of it has to be purposeful additive (either as added or crystallized/precipitated after adding) - therefore prefilling oil filters is not that nasty.

BTW - My 250,000 mile Volvo has two large FL-1A's hanging off a dual remote full flow filter - I always pre-fill both.

PS I appreciate the information and the avoidance of supplier slamming.

 

[jsharp]

quote:

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Originally posted by Patman:
I think we're all getting worried about nothing here. Think about it folks, how many of you have gotten UOAs on here with very low engine wear? So obviously we aren't pouring "liquid sand" into our engines now are we? No.

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Agree. Even if it takes 10 filter passes to get rid of all this junk, that's miniscule number compared to the total number of times the oil passes through a filter during a normal OCI.

I'd much rather have this dirt pass through the engine a few times than genernate new lead particles from the bearings of my engine by having them run dry for a few seconds thanks to not prefilling the filter...

 

[jsharp]

quote:

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Originally posted by Stinky Peterson:

quote:

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Originally posted by T-Keith:
So how much oil does it take to get the levels in these pictures? An ounce, a quart? This seems like crucial information. How about posting the brands and weights?

Your leaving out a lot of information if your trying to prove something.

-T

---

Keith

First off I'm not trying to prove anything, just trying to share information.

If you go to pbase website I have since posted the reports showing the complete report. I was reluctant to do this because some will think I am trying to get free advertising for my company's lab when I am not.

As for volume did you look at the Power Point presentation? It shows how much oil is use, it's less than 30 mL.

The reason I didn't list the brand and weights is because someone is sure enough going to say "I'm not going to buy that brand because it's dirty" and then some oil blender will be ****** off. Fact is I have not identified one brand that is dirtier or cleaner than the others. I have not yet found an oil that meets our fill spec without additional filtering. You will notice there is a sample of Cat oil that came from our bulk tank and it too has a high particle count, it has also already had some additional filtering but is not yet to the level where we can use it. The samples of the 10W30, 5W30, 15W50, and 10W40 came from quart cans. The others from bulk tanks or barrels. Only one of these was a synthetic.

If you don't want to accept this then don't, I really don't care. Some of you will use the information and maybe get a little longer life out out your engine. The rest will keep dumping contaminated oil into your filters where it gets a free ride into your bearings.

Stinky

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And some might use the information and get less life out of their engines. It's one thing to show the amount of foreign material in virgin oil. Quite another to draw the conclusion that this material will cause more problems than allowing an engine to run for some period of time with no oil flow to the bearings while the filter fills...

 

[kev99sl]

I feel like I'm turning into the grumpy oil curmudgeon, but I have to chime in here. (For what it's worth, I've swung wildly from one extreme to the other since joining this board, so this just represents my latest slant.)

I don't have scientific tests to back me up. I only have several garages and driveways of 6-15 year old vehicles that I maintain for the various people in my life, all of them with well over 100,000 miles, most with approaching or over 150,000, and one - mine - with over 200,000 miles. All of them have always had their filters pre-filled at oil changes. Until my experience shows me that pre-filling the filter and getting the oil to the engine that much more quickly is going to lop off 100,000 miles of life off of an engine, you'll forgive me if I don't care. If anything, these pictures just tell me that I probably don't have to bother prefilling, not that I should avoid it to prevent trouble.

 

[Stinky Peterson]

quote:

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Originally posted by jsharp:
... Even if it takes 10 filter passes to get rid of all this junk, that's miniscule number compared to the total number of times the oil passes through a filter during a normal OCI.

I'd much rather have this dirt pass through the engine a few times than generate new lead particles from the bearings of my engine by having them run dry for a few seconds thanks to not prefilling the filter... [/QB]

---

Not me! I know a lot of you are using bypass filters to get really clean oil. To me it makes sense to avoid contamination in the first place. I myself am going to avoid contamination as much as I can because I've seen the data that shows how reducing contamination can have a very significant affect on component life.

Here is a chart that shows what happens to life expectancy when hydraulic oil is cleaned. When dropping from an ISO code of 21/17 to 18/15 a 4 fold increase in life is the result. Going to 16/13 results in a 10X increase. I know this is a hydraulic system and its different from an engine but there are many similarities.

http://www.pbase.com/stinkypeterson/image/37283471

This is what the by-pass filter boys are striving for although many may have not seen it put forth this way. I'm talking reduced wear and increased oil life just by using clean oil.

On the topic of prefillig filters: without knowing how many gpm a small oil pump produces I don't know how long it takes to fill a filter that holds a little more than a cup. I'd venture to say it not much longer than a second or two, an in fact it is probably full before the engine gets to idle rpm. Depending on the design of the pickup tube and suction bell they drain down everytime the engine is shut off yet most people aren't worried about this and the volume is about the same. I don't think it is necessary to prefill a filter. There is always an oil film present and until the crankshaft reaches a certain speed the residual film is protecting against wear. The hydrodynamic lubrication does occur until it is rotating fast enough to "float" the crankshaft.

If your aren't concerned about this dirt that gets in the engine just remember the stuff in the pictures is the amount in about 1 oz of oil. Next time you change oil take a pinch of dirt and put in your filter because that is exactly what you are doing when you prefill with contaminated oil.

Stinky

By the way, it doesn't take 10 passes to get this stuff out. Much of it will be caught in the filter the first time through.

 

[Pablo]

Hey Stink - again whack me if you mentioned this, but have you guys analysed the collected "stuff"?

What disolves it? What do your other machines say about it? This would go a LONG way in resolving the debate, imhmat (In my humble mind, at least)

P

[ December 08, 2004, 04:23 PM: Message edited by: Pablo ]

 

[haley10]

In the 10 or 15 minutes it takes to do a complete change for me on a warm engine, I think the pre-fill is not significant. I don't use bulk oil from others, simply because I don't know how it was handled and often I'm not sure that is what it says it is.

At least with quarts or jugs, I think the bulk risk is somewhat minimized.

I'm skeptical that pre-fill does much anyway.

 

[tdi-rick]

quote:

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without knowing how many gpm a small oil pump produces I don't know how long it takes to fill a filter that holds a little more than a cup. I'd venture to say it not much longer than a second or two, an in fact it is probably full before the engine gets to idle rpm.

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Stinky, I've just fitted two full flow filters with leaky ADBV's. With the previous filter, the oil light went out in under three seconds. With the oil filter totally empty (I spun it off to check before start up) it takes approx eight seconds.
It would be an interesting test to see how much wear was generated by this extra four to five seconds of unpressurised lubrication.
This poor engine is copping a non pre-filled filter at every start up, until we can get a replacement.

[ December 08, 2004, 04:40 PM: Message edited by: tdi-rick ]

 

[MGBV8]

This may be a reason why gearboxes are now sealed, as it is believed that very clean oil will last the anticipated life of the vehicle, rather than the adding of contamination everytime the oil is changed.

Also long change synthetics help avoid contamination, although plastic motorist size containers would hopefully have less contamination.

 

[Stinky Peterson]

quote:

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Originally posted by Gary Allan:
Err ..Stinky ..just how do you know what size the resultant wear is going to be that is produced by this debris knocking stuff loose in the engine? Now I can see if you mean that you won't see the debris ..but suppose it produces a TON of 5 um or less chunks of everything???

Our lab of choice (Blackstone for most of us) allegedly measures from 15um down.

..or did I miss something

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Hi Gary

Well the larger particles can result in several possible types of wear: 3-body and case crushing. With 3 body wear the particles get caught between moving parts and cause scoring. I think it is safe to assume that the particles generated will be similar in width to the contaminants since the process is similar to taking a chisel to a piece of wood or metal. In case crushing the particles are pressed into the surface of adjacent gears or perhaps a ball bearing and its race. In the case of a ball bearing it is subjected to upwards of 160,000 psi which forms a dent. After being repeated many times the underlying material fails and the result is fatigue particles. The are course 3-dimensional and usually much bigger that the original particles. If it produces a bunch of small particles the they will show up as elevated wear elements but the large ones will not since they are too big.

As for Blackstone, I don't know know what instrument they are using. If it is a Rotrode spectrometer then they are correct in the 15 micron detection limit. If it is an ICP then they are mistaken. Up until a few years ago it was commonly believed that ICP would measure 15 micron particles but recently it has been pretty much proven otherwise. There has been much work done with microscope particle analysis so we know have good data to compare. I've seen many times when we have a membrane filter that has so many 5 micron particles that you can pick it up with a magnet yet there is less than 8ppm iron.

Here is a couple of pictures showing the debris in the oil, the PQ reading, and the Iron reading in ppm.

In the first picture there are fine wear particles and the iron reading is much higher than the PQ, this is how we can tell what size particles we are dealing with in compartments where we can't do a particle count. A couple of these have some larger particles visible but the majority are under 5 um. They are what's responsible for the dark coloration of the otherwise white filter. PQ1

Picture 2 shows large particles up to the millimeter size. Here the iron levels are very low because they are way too big for the ICP to measure. These are the ones that may be formed from the sand and dirt in the new oil and unless you have a PQ test done or cut the filter you will never even know they are there until it's too late. PQ2

What affect do these contaminants actually have on the engine's life? I can't say. In a way it's kinda like smoking, everyone pretty much agrees that it isn't good for you but how much harm does one pack do?

If you want to learn more about PQ you can go to Here and look for the Analex PQ presentation

 

[T-Keith]

So your coming out and saying that there is the equivalent of a pinch of dirt in each Ounce of oil in a bottle quart? Or are you referring to bulk oil?

Your testing is very complicated but your statements are way over simplified to the point of misleading. Obviously the one picture is much worse then the others, but if your using that one to base your comment on and that one is a bulk diesel oil, and a person reading this takes your statement to apply to the quart container 5w30 they buy it is very misleading.

-T

 

[Stinky Peterson]

quote:

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Originally posted by Pablo:
Hey Stink - again whack me if you mentioned this, but have you guys analysed the collected "stuff"?

What disolves it? What do your other machines say about it? This would go a LONG way in resolving the debate, imhmat (In my humble mind, at least)

P

---

Hi Pablo, you guys are keeping me busy!

We don't do anything with solubility mainly because we are more interested in wear, contamination. I think some of the insoluble tests were developed before the instruments we have now days and may be a little outdated. Our FTIR give us some pretty good information about oil condition so we don't do TBN either unless a customer specifically requests it and even then I usually try to discourage them because we have to charge about $10 bucks for that test alone. To me this isn't a good value since we only charge a couple dollars more for the complete analysis! This isn't to say TBN doesn't have its place, I just don't feel it's necessary for routine testing.

As for identification of contaminants, its pretty easy to identify metals, inorganics such as sand/dirt, and what I call organics which are neither of the above. We can go a little farther and tell iron form other metals with a magnet, and copper and brass are easy to identify by their appearance. I generally assume organics are either breakdown products such as varnish or resins or possibly additives that are no longer in solution. Also they can be some of the polymerics used in the equipment. We like to look at the metal particles because we can tell what kind of wear mechanisms are occurring. It is very fascinating to me!

 

[Gary Allan]

quote:

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If it is an ICP then they are mistaken. Up until a few years ago it was commonly believed that ICP would measure 15 micron particles but recently it has been pretty much proven otherwise.

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Then what size does it measure to?


I'm familar with AA (from watching it done) ..where, in this case, the sample would be vacuum filtered through a "stone" filter (I never figured out how they cleaned it) ..and it was then drawn through a capillary tube into the flame stream to read the chorona or the lack of specific light that was absorbed. If you were reading TOTAL (in our case copper) Cu ..you would digest the sample first to reduce any bigger particles to the "particle" level. This test was normally for "free" Cu.

Blackstone does not filter their samples ..at least according to Kristen ...and they do use ICP.

quote:

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I've seen many times when we have a membrane filter that has so many 5 micron particles that you can pick it up with a magnet yet there is less than 8ppm iron.

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Detune this for the organisationally challenged here. Are you saying that a massive amount of 5um particles was present in a sample ...you filtered it off and had low Fe readings anyway? This spawns the question ...why did you filter it to this level if it is obviously not indicitive of the presence of this stuff

What would your results be if the sample was not filtered to this fine degree??

 

[Stinky Peterson]

quote:

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Originally posted by T-Keith:
So your coming out and saying that there is the equivalent of a pinch of dirt in each Ounce of oil in a bottle quart? Or are you referring to bulk oil?

Your testing is very complicated but your statements are way over simplified to the point of misleading. Obviously the one picture is much worse then the others, but if your using that one to base your comment on and that one is a bulk diesel oil, and a person reading this takes your statement to apply to the quart container 5w30 they buy it is very misleading.

-T

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Keith I think you are trying to oversimplify things and this is what I was afraid of in the first place. You can't judge a brand or blend of oil based on one sample analysis. If you look at the reports I posted you will see there is a bunch of different brand and blends. In one of the posts above I said which ones were bulk and which were from quart cans. I can almost guarantee you that if you take two cans of identical oil you will get different particle counts, you might even get one that is exceptionally clean, but I doubt it. Don't try to judge oil quality based on my reports. I posted them because I thought people would find it interesting that new oil is frequently dirty.

How much is a pinch? how big are your fingers?I'm not saying that how much is in an ounce. The amount that's in an ounce is what's on the filter and you can only see a small amount of the filter's actual area in the picture. If you took all the solids in a quart or oil or maybe even a pint then it would be about a pinch, depending on the contaminant level and the size of your fingers.

I'm not trying to be misleading, I'm just trying to put it in terms that most people can relate to. Most people can't visualize a micron or a milligram very easily (I know I can't) but they do not what a pinch is.

Maybe I should give you some actual weights? - naw that's too much like work - I'll think about it. Maybe I'll go down to K-mart and buy some quart cans and do some experiments? I started this because I thought people would be interested in seeing how clean new oil is, know I feel like I'm defending my thesis.

Stinky

PS - If you want to know how clean ISO 16/13 is then take an aspirin, cut it in half and then crush up that half and put it in a 55 gallon drum of perfectly clean oil. That's about what ISO 16/13 is and that's our recommended target for fill oils.

 

[MolaKule]

Stinky,

I appreciate what you're trying to do, just show what's in some oil samples.

Being the inquisitve types we are, we simply wanted some clarifications so people don't think unnecessarily that their oils are contaminted with 1% solubles and insolubles.

I think your aspirin tablet analogy for a 55 gal barrel is right on.

I once received 5 gal. of a 20 weight ND oil that had about 175 ppm of silicon upon analysis (I analyze all my base oils before formulating/blending). Needless to say, the silicon was not anti-foamant and the bottler (or shall we call him the "Pailer") had it returned.

Upon investigation, he found that some pails had not been lidded before filling nor cleaned before filling so what ever wind blew through the warehouse carried dust into the pail.

The supplier was highly embarrased but wiser.

But this is the exception rather than the rule.

That's why it pays to analyze before proceeding.

 

[Stinky Peterson]

quote:

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Originally posted by Gary Allan:

quote:

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If it is an ICP then they are mistaken. Up until a few years ago it was commonly believed that ICP would measure 15 micron particles but recently it has been pretty much proven otherwise.

---

Then what size does it measure to?


I'm familiar with AA (from watching it done) ..where, in this case, the sample would be vacuum filtered through a "stone" filter (I never figured out how they cleaned it) ..and it was then drawn through a capillary tube into the flame stream to read the chorona or the lack of specific light that was absorbed. If you were reading TOTAL (in our case copper) Cu ..you would digest the sample first to reduce any bigger particles to the "particle" level. This test was normally for "free" Cu.

Blackstone does not filter their samples ..at least according to Kristen ...and they do use ICP.

quote:

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I've seen many times when we have a membrane filter that has so many 5 micron particles that you can pick it up with a magnet yet there is less than 8ppm iron.

---

Detune this for the organisationally challenged here. Are you saying that a massive amount of 5um particles was present in a sample ...you filtered it off and had low Fe readings anyway? This spawns the question ...why did you filter it to this level if it is obviously not indicitive of the presence of this stuff

What would your results be if the sample was not filtered to this fine degree??

---

My experience is that it measures up to about 3-5 micron range. Some will argue up to about 8 microns but I disagree. Of course it measures down to the atomic level which is about 10000 times smaller than a micron.

When we see a high particle count or high PQ we filter the oil to catch the particles so we can look at them in the microscope, we don't filter out the big chunks and then reanalyze the fluid. I have done this however when trying to learn more about copper and I found that in a sample with over 900 ppm I could not lower the reading using even a 0.22 micron filter! We now know that when we see super high copper readings they are not wear but instead due to chemical reactions. Wear results is slight increases of 30 ppm or so and yield visible wear particles we can see in the microscope. The 900 ppm samples do not have have visible particle because we are dealing with metal ions in the angstrom size range 4 orders of magnitude smaller than the resolving limit of the microscope.

You are describing a Total ICP or AA involving an acid digestion (I guess you already said that). This is expensive but it does tell how much is there. It isn't practical for routine oil analysis since almost all the data is done without digestion and it is expensive. ICP and AA yield similar readings but I'm not sure why they would filter the sample for AA, maybe because it is hard to atomize the larger particles and they interfere with the reading, I just don't know. I do know it's hard to atomize particles in the ICP's plasma and it is about the same temperature as the surface of the sun or so I am told.

Stinky