I was going to ask this question in a separate thread, but I'll just ask it here. On a ram forum, there is a thread with a lot of UOAs, and they show high wear metals are common in the first 15-20k miles of the engine. Is there a point where oil becomes too saturated with wear particles in suspension? TBN aside, does it call for more frequent oil changes in those first few thousand miles?
PUP in 2020 Ram 2500 Hemi
- Thread starter Yjay
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I don’t know what TBN is, but the manual does not call for more frequent oil changes when new.
OVERKILL
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Condemnation limit for iron is ~150ppm based on what @Doug Hillary has posted in the past.
I’m in the camp of changing it early and frequent to get out the metallic oily soup in order to limit the miles where ABRASIVE oil is flowing thru the block, filing down on a freshly made engine and increasing clearances. Some engines shed a ton, others seem to show single digit factory fill UOA at 1,000 miles. You just never know unless you sample the factory fill and evaluate.
The abrasive materials in the oil will be filtered by the oil filter and thus not flow through the block
That’s what you’d think would happen… sadly, that’s not the case.
These tiny particles are well outside the filtering capability of your average oil filter, hence why it shows up in UOA with spiked metals from the factory fill (your argument falls apart right here, because apparently the oil filter didn’t capture everything like you think, or else you’d have single digit wear rates in the report)
I see the shiny metallic soup pour out of engines on a regular basis. If it can be avoided by a simple $30 oil change to flush out the grit SOONER, I don’t understand why anyone would argue against it.
That’s what you’d think would happen… sadly, that’s not the case.
These tiny particles are well outside the filtering capability of your average oil filter, hence why it shows up in UOA with spiked metals from the factory fill (your argument falls apart right here, because apparently the oil filter didn’t capture everything like you think, or else you’d have single digit wear rates in the report)
I see the shiny metallic soup pour out of engines on a regular basis. If it can be avoided by a simple $30 oil change to flush out the grit SOONER, I don’t understand why anyone would argue against it.
I agree there are particles in the oil, labeling them abrasive seems disingenuous. That paints the picture of those particles being harmful to the engine’s longevity.
If they indeed harm it, the manufacturer would take measures to mitigate that harm or at the very least warn the owner in the owners manual to do something to mitigate the particles’ harm, e.g. change the oil early on first OCI.
Yet the manual specifies no special OCI necessary for first oil change. So is the manufacturer oblivious to these particles’ harm?
If they are aware of the particles’ harm, why specify to leave them in for a full OCI?
How long have you been driving? Owners manuals of the past used to specify draining the FF early, then the tree huggers stepped in and argued against the waste of all that oil, just for the sake of your little engine’s longevity (which nobody cares about, past the warranty period, but YOU)
There’s been published data that shows that the extremely tiny particles smaller then 10 microns are the ones responsible for most of the wear. That’s why bypass filters work so well to further clean the oil and make the equipment last LONGER.
The auto manufacturers are in the business of SELLING YOU A NEW CAR. They don’t care about longevity. They don’t want you to be a return customer every 15-20 years. They want you to come back in 2-3 years after only 60k miles and buy a new one.
They don’t want you to be a return customer every 15-20 years. They want you to come back in 2-3 years after only 60k miles and buy a new one.
Just ask the owners of early Nissan Leafs!
Those particle would have to be exceedingly tiny to show up on the UOA. The “spiked metals” isn’t from particles really, only metals that are practically in solution. The ICP plasma isn’t designed to vaporize metallic particles.That’s what you’d think would happen… sadly, that’s not the case.
These tiny particles are well outside the filtering capability of your average oil filter, hence why it shows up in UOA with spiked metals from the factory fill (your argument falls apart right here, because apparently the oil filter didn’t capture everything like you think, or else you’d have single digit wear rates in the report)
I see the shiny metallic soup pour out of engines on a regular basis. If it can be avoided by a simple $30 oil change to flush out the grit SOONER, I don’t understand why anyone would argue against it.
Hypothetical Question About Method Of UOA's
This came across my mind the other day about taking UOA's. On my Harley, there is a 'system' you can buy to run all the old oil out of the system during an oil change. It involves the use of a filter block and is a screw on 'cap' that fits where the oil filter is, and simply reroutes the oil...
bobistheoilguy.com
The number of years I’ve been driving is as irrelevant to this discussion as your “tree hugger” straw man argument.How long have you been driving? Owners manuals of the past used to specify draining the FF early, then the tree huggers stepped in and argued against the waste of all that oil, just for the sake of your little engine’s longevity (which nobody cares about, past the warranty period, but YOU)
There’s been published data that shows that the extremely tiny particles smaller then 10 microns are the ones responsible for most of the wear. That’s why bypass filters work so well to further clean the oil and make the equipment last LONGER.
The auto manufacturers are in the business of SELLING YOU A NEW CAR. They don’t care about longevity. They don’t want you to be a return customer every 15-20 years. They want you to come back in 2-3 years after only 60k miles and buy a new one.
Nevertheless, I can see all hope of having a useful back and forth has evaporated like the ghosts of decades old owners manuals, which are also irrelevant to this discussion BTW.
As such, I capitulate; you’re right, and I’m wrong. I sincerely hope you won’t think less of me though (possible?) if I continue to daily drive the 230K mile car I am currently daily driving, despite no early oil changes being done on it.
I am left wondering though, how much life was sapped from my engine by not changing the oil early the first time?
The number of years I’ve been driving is as irrelevant to this discussion as your “tree hugger” straw man argument.
Nevertheless, I can see all hope of having a useful back and forth has evaporated like the ghosts of decades old owners manuals, which are also irrelevant to this discussion BTW.
As such, I capitulate; you’re right, and I’m wrong. I sincerely hope you won’t think less of me though (possible?) if I continue to daily drive the 230K mile car I am currently daily driving, despite no early oil changes being done on it.
I am left wondering though, how much life was sapped from my engine by not changing the oil early the first time?
I’m sorry if it sounded like a mean attack towards you. That wasn’t my intention at all. I was simply pointing out the reality of the world we live it. The days of Mercedes’ making bullet proof tanks that were literally engineered to last as long as possible are gone. They now make vehicles with planned obsolescence in order for you to get tired of fixing it and go buy a new one. Nobody cares to make it last 300k miles or more.
It sucks that we have no concrete proof of what works and what doesn’t in regards to engine break in, early oil changes, frequent oil changes, cold start warm up, etc etc. it’s a never ending debate, from the looks of it, with people arguing on both sides that their turd has made it to 200k just fine.
It just helps when people post technically accurate information.It sucks that we have no concrete proof of what works and what doesn’t in regards to engine break in, early oil changes, frequent oil changes, cold start warm up, etc etc. it’s a never ending debate, from the looks of it, with people arguing on both sides that their turd has made it to 200k just fine.
And 200K? Pfft.
dnewton3
Staff member
I would disagree to a large extent. We have reams of macro data from (literally) tens of thousands of UOAs that shows several things:It sucks that we have no concrete proof of what works and what doesn’t in regards to engine break in, early oil changes, frequent oil changes, cold start warm up, etc etc. it’s a never ending debate, from the looks of it, with people arguing on both sides that their turd has made it to 200k just fine.
* It is proven beyond any reasonable doubt that shorter OCIs (3-5k miles) do NOT reduce wear over longer OCIs (10-15k miles). And in fact, the longer the OCIs mature, the lower the wear rates go. This is true of the VAST majority of engines (admittedly not all, but nearly all of them).
* Break-in practices mean little to nothing in modern engines. The wear rates AFTER the break-in period is over are the same for both "babied" and "normal" OCIs after the first 20k miles; you cannot distinguish wear rates from either practice past 20k miles. Vehicles that see frequent OCIs in the first 20k miles are no more or less likley to develp desirable wear rates than those that endure normal OCIs in those same first 20k miles.
* Data proves conclusively that "cold starts" mean essentially nothing in terms of overall wear trends. Vehicles that have frequent cold starts don't suffer higher wear rates than those that have longer operational patterns.
NOTE: For this statement, "Cold starts" are defined as anything above -10F. Below -10F, those would be better classified as "Extreme Cold starts", and very few vehicles endure high quantities of frequent starts at those temps. For those "extreme" applications, synthetic fluids are advisable and can offset any concern for high-wear during those extreme cold starts. Also, this presumes you are using the correct grade oil and specification for your application; I cannot comment on circumstances where people are using the incorrect oil in extreme environments.
I have been telling people this for over a decade. The fact that they ignore the data is beyond my control. I have somewhere around 25k UOAs in my database by now; so many now that I'm really not interested in collecting any more. The data analysis results have not changed from 10 years ago when I set out to prove the "normality" of wear trends. Modern engines and modern lubes have made most of these conversations moot, yet people still want to argue their ill-founded opinions rather than just accept facts.
Look, I appreciate everything you do for this forum and the data you’ve gathered and analyzed but at the end of the day, our pathetic $25 used oil analysis are not 100% facts that I’m willing to bet my life on.
I want actual proof. Run two engines side by side. No oil filters. One gets a gentle warm up, the other is late to work and blasts off towards the sunrise. Which will have less wear? If it’s equal and doesn’t matter because engines are built proof and oils are blended by god himself, then I’ll stop babying my engine until it’s HOT and will WOT right outta my neighborhood and let my neighbors wake up to the sound of my expensive exhaust system.
I haven’t seen anyone of authority from the automotive world show actual proof. It’s all hearsay.
I thought we were just talking about "cold starts", not mechanical abuse. Which one is it here?
And no, "cold starts" (without abuse) is not where the majority of wear occurs. The MOFT is high and that is of course what actually prevents wear. The majority of wear occurs during warmup.
dnewton3
Staff member
Let's not discount the effect of the TCB here.
Early on in the OCI, the TCB is thinner and provides less wear protection. As the OCI matures, the TCB grows thicker and provides a much greater effect at wear reduction. (SAE 2007-01-04133). The majority of wear actually comes when the OCIs are shorter; in the first 1-3k miles, the TCB is not nearly as prevelant. The quantity of starts seems to have little effect during that duration.
I ran several garage experiments with UOAs in my wife's old Villager (Nissan VG30E). It was a true quintessential soccer-mom vehicle; it got a LOT of "cold starts" and "short trips" most of the time (total of around 240k miles before we sold it). Occasionally we'd take it on long vacations out west, where the start-to-distance ratio was greatly altered. And yet the UOAs didn't show any statistically different wear trend data. The ONLY thing that altered the wear rates were the OCI distance itself; not the cold-start-cycle ratios. The wear rates came down as the OCIs got longer. Initially, when it was first new, I followed the "severe" schedule (OCIs = 3k miles) for about the first 45k mile or so. Then I upped the OCIs a little at a time; 5k for a while, then 10k miles became the normal OCI. The "use factor" never changed, it was still a primary stop-go/short-cycle vehile the vast majority of it's life. The change in wear rates were not affected by the "cold starts" The wear rates reacted to the changed variable; the OCI duration. The correlation of the OCI to the wear rate effect coincides with the information and experiments detailed in the SAE study I mentioned. The SAE study notes that the wear rates did NOT track with the vis, nor the start-cycles. (The study was done on CrownVic taxi cabs which ran nearly non-stop in Los Vegas). The "cold starts" were nearly non-existent in that SAE study. Yet the wear rates trended with the OCI maturity. That same effect (OCI TCB maturity) was echoed in the home experiment I did; the severity factor of many cold/frequent starts didn't change the wear rates, but the OCI duration did!
In my database of around 25k UOAs, I can see all manner of input variables, many of which include things we start-stop cycles, environmental extremes, etc. I often can link the UOA data to the UOAs posted here and elsewhere, where the facts outside the UOA data itself are discovereable. I can say with certainty that modern engines using modern oils generally don't have much issue with "cold starts" causing high wear.
There is one caveat I am willing to concede to ... extreme cold starts paired with long "warm up" idle periods. These conditions actually will induce higher wear. The very cold temps cause a the engine to endure a high fuel-dilution effect, and the long "warm up" period actually exacerbates the wash-down condition by causing it to continue in duration for way longer than necessary. I've seen that effect more than once in UOA data, some of it right her on BITOG. People think a slow "warm up" in really cold temps is a good thing, but it's actually the opposite; it causes higher wear. That prolonged, slow warm up just encourages a lot more ring/cylinder wear and such. I've concluded that best thing to do is to start it up, wait until the rpm flare is done (cat warm up for about 30-90 seconds), and then drive at a sensible pace. Loading the engine with work demand (gas or diesel) sooner will cause it to warm quicker, and the sooner the engine and oil come up to temp, the better in terms of drivability and wear reduction.
If you want to induce high wear in an engine, do one of two things ...
- start it and let it idle for 20 minutes in the uber-cold temps, taking forever to get the engine up to temp
- start it and run WOT immediately (some emergency service vehicles) before the engine is at temp
Other than those conditions, "start up" wear isn't nearly as prevelant as folks think. The OCI duration (TCB maturity) is the main controlling factor in wear reduction. It's the ONLY thing that shows good correlation to wear rates.
That's my two cents on the topic.
Early on in the OCI, the TCB is thinner and provides less wear protection. As the OCI matures, the TCB grows thicker and provides a much greater effect at wear reduction. (SAE 2007-01-04133). The majority of wear actually comes when the OCIs are shorter; in the first 1-3k miles, the TCB is not nearly as prevelant. The quantity of starts seems to have little effect during that duration.
I ran several garage experiments with UOAs in my wife's old Villager (Nissan VG30E). It was a true quintessential soccer-mom vehicle; it got a LOT of "cold starts" and "short trips" most of the time (total of around 240k miles before we sold it). Occasionally we'd take it on long vacations out west, where the start-to-distance ratio was greatly altered. And yet the UOAs didn't show any statistically different wear trend data. The ONLY thing that altered the wear rates were the OCI distance itself; not the cold-start-cycle ratios. The wear rates came down as the OCIs got longer. Initially, when it was first new, I followed the "severe" schedule (OCIs = 3k miles) for about the first 45k mile or so. Then I upped the OCIs a little at a time; 5k for a while, then 10k miles became the normal OCI. The "use factor" never changed, it was still a primary stop-go/short-cycle vehile the vast majority of it's life. The change in wear rates were not affected by the "cold starts" The wear rates reacted to the changed variable; the OCI duration. The correlation of the OCI to the wear rate effect coincides with the information and experiments detailed in the SAE study I mentioned. The SAE study notes that the wear rates did NOT track with the vis, nor the start-cycles. (The study was done on CrownVic taxi cabs which ran nearly non-stop in Los Vegas). The "cold starts" were nearly non-existent in that SAE study. Yet the wear rates trended with the OCI maturity. That same effect (OCI TCB maturity) was echoed in the home experiment I did; the severity factor of many cold/frequent starts didn't change the wear rates, but the OCI duration did!
In my database of around 25k UOAs, I can see all manner of input variables, many of which include things we start-stop cycles, environmental extremes, etc. I often can link the UOA data to the UOAs posted here and elsewhere, where the facts outside the UOA data itself are discovereable. I can say with certainty that modern engines using modern oils generally don't have much issue with "cold starts" causing high wear.
There is one caveat I am willing to concede to ... extreme cold starts paired with long "warm up" idle periods. These conditions actually will induce higher wear. The very cold temps cause a the engine to endure a high fuel-dilution effect, and the long "warm up" period actually exacerbates the wash-down condition by causing it to continue in duration for way longer than necessary. I've seen that effect more than once in UOA data, some of it right her on BITOG. People think a slow "warm up" in really cold temps is a good thing, but it's actually the opposite; it causes higher wear. That prolonged, slow warm up just encourages a lot more ring/cylinder wear and such. I've concluded that best thing to do is to start it up, wait until the rpm flare is done (cat warm up for about 30-90 seconds), and then drive at a sensible pace. Loading the engine with work demand (gas or diesel) sooner will cause it to warm quicker, and the sooner the engine and oil come up to temp, the better in terms of drivability and wear reduction.
If you want to induce high wear in an engine, do one of two things ...
- start it and let it idle for 20 minutes in the uber-cold temps, taking forever to get the engine up to temp
- start it and run WOT immediately (some emergency service vehicles) before the engine is at temp
Other than those conditions, "start up" wear isn't nearly as prevelant as folks think. The OCI duration (TCB maturity) is the main controlling factor in wear reduction. It's the ONLY thing that shows good correlation to wear rates.
That's my two cents on the topic.
dnewton3
Staff member
If you want actual proof, I'm willing to help out. I am more than willing to do a DOE that would help you make up your mind. But I doubt you have the time/money to pay for the expense of such an experiment. (not costs of my time, but the time it takes to do a proper field experiment with all the proper resources).
- first of all, using "no filters" is not a realistic condition, unless we're talking about small OPE engine, so why induce a variable into the test that does not represent real life?
- second, using only two samples (engines) is woefully short of having enough data to account for normal variation (standard deviation)
Your proposed experiment is a fools errand; you're not proving anything other than you can induce unrealistic conditions that don't represent typical operational parameters for normal, everyday life. That, and your sample sizes are absurdly low.
Data has shown that perhaps the best method to reduce wear are these two things used together:
- longer OCIs make for a thicker (more desirable) TCB layer which has been proven to reduce wear and reduce friction
- sensible start-up procedures; start the engine and let it settle past the rpm flare (the warm up of the cat converters; usually 30-90 secs). Then put it in "D" and drive with normal throttle inputs. This brings the engine and oil up to temp as quickly as possible without undue stress on the engine or oil. The sooner the engine warms up, the less fuel dilution. The sooner the engine warms up, the sooner the oil is up to the intended operating vis.
Worrying about "start up wear" is plain silly for probably 99% of us.
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dnewton3
Staff member
Tribochemical Barrier. It's a film of oxidation that is laid down from the oils on the metal surfaces. While it is true to sat that massive oxidation of oils is a bad thing (sludge, etc), the thin films on the parts can actually become beneficial and greatly reduces wear. As the OCI matures, the films become thicker and help reduce both wear and friction. Seems counter-intuitive, but it's proven to be true.
Several SAE articles and studies on it; one of the revealing is SAE 2007-01-4133
www.sae.org
Several SAE articles and studies on it; one of the revealing is SAE 2007-01-4133
The Effect of Oil Drain Interval on Valvetrain Friction and Wear
Engine oils are subjected to a series of industry standard engine dynamometer tests to measure their wear protection capability, sludge and varnish formation tendencies, and fuel efficiency among several other performance attributes before they are approved for use in customer engines. However, thes
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