Dave wrote back, saying that Na, K, and Si are within normal range, but boron should be zero for this oil. Also, the oil should not give a false positive for glycol.
The previous oil was Pennzoil 5w30. I found a 10w30 and 5w20 VOA and they have about 60 and 70 ppm boron. My engine would have to hide more than a quart of oil to have that much boron carry over from the previous fill. But if the pennzoil had 200+ ppm boron like some of the Mobil 1's, this might be normal.
Maybe I should add tracer element like strontium to my coolant, and see if it shows up in the oil. Unfortunately, there's only 875 miles left on the warranty.
This car had it's first head gasked leak at 18,000 miles, and the night after I got it home from the dealership, a piston broke in pieces. They installed a new short block. The piston slap on this one is very loud in winter time, and now the head gaskey might be leaking. I will do a CO sniffer test tomorrow, and look for bubbles in the overflow tank. This is how I diagnosed the previous head gasket leak.
There's a recall on my car that I haven't done yet, where they add a bottle of radiator stop leak to the coolant, to seal up the leaking head gaskets. This is Subaru's way of patching a bad design.
I dumped the oil because it was getting dark earlier than normal, and because I want to take the car in to let them listen to the very loud piston slap. I want to have 5w30 in the engine at that time.
Fe, Cr, Al, Pb, and Cu are all up on a per mile basis. I wanted to see if the engine could safely use 5w20, but now I don't know what to make of it, since the glycol might have elevated the wear metals slightly. The manual specifies SAE #30 and greater oils for this car, so I was experimenting.
[ February 15, 2005, 03:07 AM: Message edited by: oilyriser ]
