I am rapidly approaching my first oil change on an '06 Dodge/Cummins 610 and in the course of deciding on an oil/filter stumbled upon this site.Great site lots of information , thanks.
This leads to my question. When is it beneficial to begin oil analysis? Now(5k)? 10k ,50k or more. It seems reasonable that starting early would provide good baseline numbers but maybe early in an engines life numbers are skewed due to wear in.
I traded an '01 Dodge/Cummins with 140k using Rotella T for its life with an OCI of 4k. I never had this oil analyzed but always felt that 4k was about the reasonable limit.
I would like to extend the OCI on this engine to 5k or 7.5k and plan to use either Delo400 or Tection Extra in this engine with Fleetgaurd Stratopore filter.
I would appreciate your opinions on this matter.
When to begin UOA's
- Thread starter bgenlvtex
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Patman
Staff member
I am a bit obsessed with oil analysis so if it were me, I'd begin right away and continue for the life of the vehicle. It's good to see how the engine wear looks when new and see at what point it begins to stabilize.
The sooner you start analyzing your oil, the sooner you'll start building your wear metals baseline. Early in your engine's life you should expect to see the wear metals to continuously decline. If they aren't declining you know you have a problem.
As your engine ages the wear metals should level out and then you'll know your motor is fully broken-in and then you can watch for unexpected spikes that indicate a problem.
It's never too early to begin UOAs.
I think you are at a reasonable time to start. Personally I wouldn't take a sample this time. I think analyzing the initial oil charge although it might be interesting isn't as useful. The wild card though is if there is a coolant leak..the sooner the analysis starts the better. Thats why I think its useful to dump the initial oil charge after a couple of K miles (max) and then sample the next batch.
5000 miles is well within the reasonable limit of the engine. my dad did 5000 mile oci on his 91 and is doing the same on his 05. he used supertech on his 91 and was going to do the same on the 05 but it seems that the supertech 15w40 is getting hard to find in our area.
i believe that the owners manual states 7500 miles under severe service and 15000 miles under normal service. i think that is what my dads is. from what i have read do not expect the engine to be fully broken in for 10000 - 15000 miles but i may be wrong on this. and it also seems that towing a nice big load with it helps with the breakin process. for a lot of info on all generation dodge trucks with cummins engines check out www.dieseltruckresource.com
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