Cummins L10, high nit.

[sdan27]

I took an oil sample from the Cummins L10 engine in our Case IH 9250 tractor. The tractor has 6410 hours with 404 hours on the oil. I did an in-frame overhaul on the engine a couple years ago so it probably only has about 1000 hours since then. The tractor does a lot of heavy field work, especially this time of year pulling the subsoiler and chisel plow. We're using Service Pro 15w-40 and everything looked good except the nitration was high. Should I worry about that if all other numbers were good?

Iron 31
Al 2
Cu 1
Lead 8
Sili 5
Sod 4
Moly 132
Bor 20
Mag 985
Cal 1513
Phos 1071
Zn 1247

Fuel Soot .3%
Vis 100 C 14.6
TBN 5.56
Oxid 19
Nit 26

 

[The motor guy]

Nitration means the oil has been exposed to high levels of oxygen. So it's been aerated a bunch. Not really sure if it's a big deal or not. Probably not. Lead looks kind of high though. My cummins 6.7L usually shows 1ppm for lead. But it could be normal for your engine. Remember I said kind of high. Probably nothing to lose sleep over.

 

[sdan27]

I think nitration can be a sign of blow-by which, the engine does use some oil but you don't see it smoking hardly at all when its working in the fields. Before I did the in-frame it had a constant blue haze coming from the stack and there was even engine oil leaking out the exhaust manifold. The lead did seem a little high but its about the same as past UOAs I've done with shorter time intervals so I'm not real worried. I think if it were a bearing problem, I'd be seeing some Tin as well which I didn't see any of that. I think I might try and do 450-500 hours for the next interval.