Here’s my first UOA on my Durango with a relatively long oil run. I have seen poor performance (low TBN) of Redline in other reports and thought I would post this. I’m completely happy with the job it’s doing to protect this engine. The oil run was also over a two year period, as I don’t drive the D in the winter. It is mostly towing (over 50%), as the D’s job is to tow the boat and track car (both 5,000#). I asked Blackstone if there were any tell tale signs of lifter / cam wear that they have identified in the Hemi engine, so his comments were addressing that question. I guess I was hoping for a magical early warning sign of a failure, but apparently we just need to watch the iron numbers.
Redline 5w-20 / 9,700mi on oil / 2014 5.7 Hemi Durango R/T
- Thread starter Jstew
- Start date
Thank you for posting this UOA. I have used Redline in my BMW and Harley in the past and did not submit any UOA's for either. I was impressed with the performance aspect in both. The air-cooled vtwin LOVED the 20w-50 from Redline. I had over 30K miles on the bike when I tried this brand and was kicking myself for not using it sooner.
The TBN here looks strong for the mileage. A good testimonial for Redline here!
The TBN here looks strong for the mileage. A good testimonial for Redline here!
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Only thing that stands out to me is the viscosity increase from 9.0 to almost 10, which shows a bit of oxidative thickening. You might want to watch that if you plan on making longer runs.
Good eye - I see now that virgin RL 5/20 has a 9.0 CSt at 100C. Curios as to why - maybe the 2 year interval? My understanding is that it’s the heat cycles and extreme temps that oxidize, not time in sump. The oil frequently sees 230-240 degrees in towing duty for my application, but that shouldn't be a problem for this oil?
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Wouldn't be the first time we've seen oxidative thickening with longer runs on Redline from what I recall, as I said, it's not at a concerning level, but something to be wary of going forward if your plans were to extend the runs further, TBN doesn't tell the whole story.
D
Deleted member 89374
I've seen a quite a few RedLine VOAs and UOAs, and one showcasing RL 0W-30 and 5W-30 in the same HEMI, multiple runs of each. What stood out was that the 0W-30 lost a bit of viscosity from exposure to heat, while the 5W-30 gained a little bit. I think that their 5W-X motor oils are formulated vastly differently from their 0W-X offerings. The 5W-X are also their highest density oils, slightly higher than 10W-X. That indicates to me that they might have the highest ester content. The loss (0W-X) or increase (0W-X) is not due to the length of the run, but rather due to heat cycles. That's something to think about.
@Jstew it's good oil, but don't go 12,000 miles on it like Blackstone advices you to do. They tend to be a tad overzealous with their recommendations because they make a highly superficial assessment of the condition of your engine based on the very same UOA they provide you with.
Also, you cannot infer cam and lifter wear from a UOA. If one of your lifters wasn't hardener enough and one day decides to split in 4 to 5 pieces, how will you be warned? I have to find the pictures, as l've seen it happen. No warning. I'll post them when I find them again. Just take care of the engine and you should be fine, don't stress over it. Maybe try RL 5W-30 in your HEMI.
dnewton3
Staff member
I both agree and disagree.
If you have a catastrophic acute failure, you're unlikley to discover it in a UOA because of the sudden nature of the event. If a con-rod breaks, or piston skirt shatters, you'll only know it when the unholy noise comes knocking (paron the pun). Other failures, chronic ones, will give some notice. And if you have the right info at the right time, you actually would see the issue in a UOA.
Also, the nature of the failure plays into this. If you crack a con-rod, while there will be some small particles shed, most will be very large parts flying apart. Fractures happen nearly instantly in terms of failure, and "chunks" are the prominent result (these chunks are far to large to be seen in spectral analysis). Wear-related failures are different; they will shed plenty of particles that can easily be seen in a spectral analysis.
The greatest inhibitor to seeing a cam/lifter failure in this case (modern Hemi), is that our sense of "timeliness" is unlikely to take the UOA sample(s) at the right time. If you only UOA every 5k or 10k miles, the failure mode can initiate and ramp up quicker than those limits. If you were to UOA every 1k miles, you quite possibly would discover the issue at onset. Also, to see this in a sense of relative trend shift, you'd have to know the exact variation of your wear pre-event, so that you can recognize the Fe uptick as it begins a trend-shift. As I understand it, these cam/lifter failures occur when the roller bearings seize. From there, it doesn't take long to destroy the lifter and the lobe. Plenty of YT vids to show this being the case. It may not be the only failure mode for this problem, but it's certainly the prevelant one. There's no way you'd miss the onset of failure IF you were taking UOA samples often enough, and had the specific statistical info needed for your particular engine. But because most folks don't have this info, it goes "unseen".
My point is this ...
It's not that a UOA can't catch this type of failure mode; it certainly can. The issue is that you're unlikely to see it simply because you're not looking often enough. The UOA technology, in and of itself, is certainly capable of detecting the rise in Fe. If this Hemi failure mode took 30k miles to gradually increase, pretty much anyone would see it taking UOAs every 10k miles. But because it happens most likely in 1-3k miles, pretty much no one will every catch it until it's too late.
Good advice - I think I pretty much ran it to it’s limit, despite the 12K Blackstone recommendation. I have learned a lot about the oil through this thread, in fact wouldn’t have caught the viscosity increase in my report if it weren’t for the members here. I may have run it to 12k, hadn’t I posted the report. Interesting observations on the different formulations as well.
I think you are right - once those lifters start eating the cam, it’s trouble pretty quick. I too, have read and watched in depth on this subject and have come to think it’s a combination of multiple factors mentioned on this forum and others.
As far as catching it on the UOA, I’ll contemplate the cost / benefit of sampling every 5k, and changing every 10k. Then I might increase my odds of catching a failure in the 1-3K time frame.
Anyway, thanks everyone for the education and advice. I met my objective as to see if this oil was up to the task of what I would classify as ”sever duty” for the 10k run.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
While I agree with your point, I think you are ascribing too long a horizon to failure from onset. Once the roller stops rolling (which is precipitated by the needle bearings breaking through the defective hardening on either the roller or the pin, causing them to pile up) failure is rapid as the cores are SADI and as soon as the hardening is breached, the surfaces eat each other. I expect you have considerable damage in minutes, maybe hours, not 1,000+ miles. Many of the ones we've seen apart, the lobe is worn down considerably and the roller is often in half with the lifter body worn down. The wear rate tapers off as the valve spring pressure is eaten up by the self-clearancing nature of the process and the engines continue to run reasonably well even after a failure, which is often why they take a while to end up in the shop. This was our experience with the one failure we had at work. While not as quick an event as a bearing spin, it's one of those things that just isn't within the capabilities of being detected/predicted by UOA's before considerable damage is done IMHO.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
That's because the 0w-30 has a higher VII load and a lighter base oil blend than the 5w-30. My understanding is that the base oil composition (not viscosity) is similar across all of the Redline white bottle products, or that was historically the case. So rather than the 5w-30 use a cheaper blend of bases (like Group III) like you'd see with a normal blender, it just uses more, heavier, PAO.
It's quite possible to have both mechanical shear as well as oxidative thickening happening simultaneously and them either cancelling each other out or one outpacing the other. With the 5w-30, there is likely very little VII to shear so the oxidative thickening dictates the direction the viscosity takes. Contrarily, the 0w-30 will have more VII and lighter bases, which means a lower floor from which viscosity will increase (base oil viscosity) so viscosity loss from shear may dominate, resulting in viscosity going the other way.
dnewton3
Staff member
I have no ability to say that any one engine will have a lifter will wear out at X,xxx miles. It was merely an example to illuminate my point; the lifter wear will happen far sooner than most folks will pull a UOA sample. I think there is merit in your point; it probably happens fairly quickly, at least in these Hemi's. It's happened to me before; in my assigned Charger at the SO. It started acting a tad odd and I mentioned it in one of my maintenance reports; I was told "it's nothing to worry about." Several shifts later (perhaps 900 driven miles?), it went into full limp-mode during an emergency run. So that was my anecdotal direct experience; I used that as an estimate. Of course, our LEO use puts many idle hours on the engine as well, so who's to really know how soon it may happen after the initial onset? You may well be right; the propensity may cause it to happen quicker?
My point really was to illustrate that it will seem "immediate" because we essentially get no warning, but the warning does exist ... It's just that we don't UOA often enough to catch it. It most certainly would show up in the UOA; ya can't grind away that much steel in rollers, lifters and lobes and not have it show up in the oil.
You’d probably have a better chance of detecting it if you performed an acid digestion on the sample prior to analysis. That’s what we did in college.
OVERKILL
$100 Site Donor 2021
Yes, the aftermath will definitely show in a UOA, I just mean in terms of a predictive nature, the failure is so rapid, and damage so immediate once that roller stops rolling, that you aren't going to predict a failure in advance in order to prevent damage to the lifter or lobe. It's a failure that isn't progressive enough to elicit advanced signs before damage is done.
In the lifter failures I've seen, that's how it goes. Sudden, little to no warning.
The worst one I've seen was in a solid roller LS engine. The link bar on one of the lifter sets was binding, but there was no indication of it. The links are case hardened and wasn't wearing excessively, no increase in iron (or any other metal) in UOAs. The link bar was just getting really hot. It finally fatigued and came apart. The roller lifters spun sideways in the bores, digging the side of the rollers into the lobes, and pretty much instantly shattering them into pieces. The lobes were toast. The worst of it though was the lifter destruction opened the lash on the valvetrain up to the point the rocker arm kicked sideways, hit the retainer knocking the locks off the valve, and dropping the valve into the cylinder. This all happened at 8000 rpm.
dnewton3
Staff member
In this we are in total agreement. And even if the event happend very soon before the UOA sample was taken, but the time the UOA sample sits in a shipping truck, finally gets to the lab, sits on a shelf, finally get processed, and you get the results, it's already too late.
Many failure modes in engines give some form of warning; coolant leaks or coolant ingestion, odd noises, wear metal trend shifts in analysis. But this particular failure mode simply sneaks up on ya and then Poof! Replacement time.
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D
Deleted member 89374
I have a 2016 RAM 1500 with a 5.7 HEMI. So far, the engine has been flawless. Currently, I run Mobil 1 FS 0W-40 with a FRAM FS2 filter.
I use a magnetic drain plug with a powerful neodymium magnet. I also put neodymium magnets on the oil filter, around twenty small magnets. Currently, I don't have them on the FRAM FS2 because this filter is entirely coated with a material to make it easier to grip.
As such, I would say that using powerful magnets to keep ferrous contaminants being pumped back into the engine will somewhat skew those Fe values on the UOA.
What's your opinion?
It would depend on the particle size and geometry. As you state, “somewhat” is probably accurate.
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