Proposed diesel oil study-what are your thoughts?

[Tony B]

Hello,

I was wondering if anyone was interested in doing an oil study with my vehicle. It is a 2000 Ford Powerstroke 7.3 crew cab long bed. It gets driven 2000-2500 miles a WEEK. Currently it has 235,000 or so miles. It is used as a hauler for hauling new travel trailers and fifth wheels to dealers across the US and Canada. So half the miles are loaded and half unloaded. I have never had a used oil analysis done yet. The engine is very clean, with very little if any blowby. I am the owner since a few weeks ago and previous oil history that I have seems to have been changed every 3-5 miles with a dino dealer oil-records indicate till at least 8x,xxx miles. Previous one owner car so I would think the maintanance was kept up thruout. Previous oil change was with Mobil 1 Truck and SUV oil.

With this type of mileage and mixed usage we should get quick results with oil changes,waiting weeks and not months.

If enough support is given I will go ahead and pledge my truck and the time to get samples and post results for everyones benefits for a given mileage period. By support I am talking about various oils to be tested and used oil analysis as that will get quite expensive fast. I stock the Mobil 1 Truck and SUV oil and use that as "my" oil. I also use the Supertech filters for the filter changes every 10,000 miles along with the oil.

The engine uses no oil-or I should say very,very little like 1/4 quart every 4-5000 miles so it is not topped off. The oil capacity is 15 quarts of oil, and the filter is gigantic and it itself holds like 1.5-2 quarts oil.

So what do you think? any interest?? Any support offers? Any questions?

Thanks,
Tony

 

[Ken2]

Sounds like a perfect candidate for a test. I'd suggest an auto-rx cleaning of the engine to get it off to a good start.

Why do you buy top quality oil and cheapo filters? Your engine is your livihood. Consider Fleetguard Stratapore filters, or at least Baldwin, WIX/NAPA-Gold, Donaldson, or Motorcraft.


Ken

 

[Bio-T]

All you ever want to know about oil and filters in a 7.3 and 6.0 Ford PSD.

http://members.aol.com/fmtrvt/OilStudy/

 

[Tony B]

Actually I made a mistake in the miles a WEEK- the 2000-2500 miles a week were loaded miles so that total miles a WEEK is like 4,000-5,000.

While I do appreciate the variety of oils and vehicles in the oil study link posted- the shear numbers of data seem to make it hard to make sense...i.e can't see the tree because of the forest. Also several (many) started as new so you have the wear metals associated with breakin--then you are wondering how long are those metals still in there for. By the time you exclude those used oil analysis as breakin ones you are not left with very many to extrapolate data from.

What is nice in testing one engine- driving conditions will be similar throught the test--one driver-one engine-similar mileage conditions throught the test. Several of the numbers posted on the link above showed unexplained surges in iron and other metals---was this because of towing? racing? off roading?

By eliminating these stray variables we can have a more controlled study instead of a compilation of random data from various sources. By the way I am not knocking the oil study in the above link--it provides good data on some points, yet leaves some unanswered.

Interestingly one point in a oil certification testing faze is to place a base oil in the engine and run it for so long. Then drain and run the oil being tested in the engine for so long. Drain.Then put the base oil back in. During this time data is collected and recorded for the oil and validates its performance according to a known base oil. By running it in one engine before and after- the changes in the data can be directly related to the oil and not some other factors.

A similar approach can be had with this proposed oil study should it materialize. If an oil performs--say with high iron--it can be run again after a different oil and if it shows high iron again--then we have narrowed it down to the oil, and not that the truck was racing at the weekend this time. The nice thing is that this engine has most probably stabilized in the wear metals and the high mileage will allow us quick-week by week analysis as an oil change is done ever week or two weeks dependig on dino/syn oils.

So theoretically we can have 4 used oil analysis in one month-we can then recheck any obvious ones the next month. The weather,driving conditions and other variables are kept relatively the same giving any data differences more weight as being oil caused. So in simple terms, due to the oils quick changing cycles oil samples are tested in the same month, verses comparing two oils summer verses winter.

What are your thoughts?

Thanks,

Tony

 

[Tony B]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Ken2:

Why do you buy top quality oil and cheapo filters? Your engine is your livihood. Consider Fleetguard Stratapore filters, or at least Baldwin, WIX/NAPA-Gold, Donaldson, or Motorcraft.


Ken

---

Ken,

The oil filters I buy are rated for 99% first pass efficiency and 98% multiple pass efficiency. Those are pretty high numbers- alot better then Fram. I would be interested in seeing what some of those other filters you mentioned are rated at.

With an oil change every other week, the oil filter is not in there very long so as long as adequate filtration is being done I don't want throw away extra money if I don't have too. My filter runs about $6.88-$23. The $6.88 is the super tech, the high end is the dealer or other top makers.

I am waiting for the trasko bypass/full flow filter for this application to be completed as that will be what I keep on the engine should the numbers from this to be installed filter prove good, as it can go for extended periods before being changed and then you just change a replaceable filter element similar to TP.

Thanks,

Tony

 

[deepsquat]

You can put me down for one donation ..assuming you get enough people to chip in ..heck one analysis per 10,000 miles should be good. but 5000 is okay too.
My guess is that you will find that changing the oil every 10,000 miles is too soon..