Originally Posted By: VTS16
Originally Posted By: dnewton3
What condemnation limits have you set for the lube?
I would agree that you might be approaching some reasonable limit, but I'm curious as to what you have established for your limits?
I dont have any limits at all. I just want to minimize wear, and need to find the best route to do that.
since iron is the only one a little high, is was just wondering if a thicker oil would help...
How are you going to measure your efforts to "minimize wear"?
What I'm getting at is that you need to be concerned about two things:
1) wear rates
2) condemnation levels for the lube
Until you work on those concepts, you're just running around blindly.
As for the wear rates, you can start to look at these as you collect several UOAs, and then you'll have some fundemental starting point to know what seems reasonable for your vehicle. That is just the very tip of the beginning of getting micro data analysis started.
I know nothing about the little diesel you have, and I doubt Blackstone has many UOAs on it. You need to find some kind of database with some reasonable quantity of information so you can judge how you compare in a marco sense.
As for condemnation levels, there are some reasonable estimates we could make; Fe at 100, Cu and Pb perhaps 35, Al and Cr perhaps 25? Fuel would be maybe limited to 3%; same for soot? I don't know about the engine; you might have to seek out some levels, as mine are only wide and wild stabs based upon other marques, in a general sense.
What I'm trying to impress upon you is that getting the "lowest" numbers in a UOA is pretty much meaningless, because you can always manipulate the OCI/UOA to bias the results. Further, looking at singular UOAs can never give you a true picture of what is "better"; there is simply not enough data to base any fair conclusion upon. Normal variation will create enough "noise" in the results that any decision you made would be based upon a false sense of performance.
What you need to do is establish some criteria for your quest:
Set an OCI and stick with it. (Using the OEM OCI is never a bad starting point.)
UOA at those OCIs for a while to establish ranges and trends.
Stick with one lube/grade/filter for the testing; minimize the input variables.
Then you can see what your wear rates are, and hopefully compare/contrast them to other similar vehicles with this engine series. Once you establish how your vehicle is running and performing, you can then look at extending OCIs, and/or trying different products.
Please read my normalcy article; it may help you understand how/why to use UOAs.