UOAs and Wear Metals Trapped by Oil Filters

[jthorner]

If the oil filter is doing a good job, shouldn't many of the wear particles be caught in it rather than being left suspended in the motor oil? It seems that testing what comes out of the sump and ignoring whatever is trapped in the filter leaves out important information. Am I missing something? John

 

[RavenTai]

yes the spectral analysis that most of these labs use only "sees" extremely small particles in the oil much smaller than a standard oil filter can remove (+/- 25 micron ) and even still smaller that bypass filters can remove (supposedly <1 micron) you may be able to see the filters eff3cts inderectly by less/more wear metals caused by dirt particles [ April 30, 2004, 03:11 AM: Message edited by: RavenTai ]

 

[DavoNF]

A good measure of ferrous wear particles is provided by the PQ index. The lab I use (Wear Check) provides this info. It is a measure of the total iron in the sample, regardless of particle size. Some more info here: http://www.kittiwake.com/products/product_pages/Analex/Who_are_Analex.asp Do any of your labs use this technique? Dave [ April 30, 2004, 03:24 AM: Message edited by: DavoNF ]

 

[RavenTai]

quote:

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Originally posted by DavoNF: Do any of your labs use this technique? Dave

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I use blackstone, I think they use spectro only