Originally Posted By: ARCOgraphite
... The engine wear evidence is in the filter pleats NOT the UOA.
I only see uselfullness here if someone is driving a LOT of hours** and they wish to extend OCI to near MAX.
**over 20K per year.
Then there is the fun and learning factor.
I cant argue THAT aspect.
I agree that often UOAs are a bit of overkill in that they are typically unnecessary for the average application. Most folks here get them, don't understand how to use the information (or outright ignore it), and then espouse some invalid conclusion. There are a bazillion vehicles and equipment that run successfully for a long time and never get one UOA.
I would disagree that the evidence of wear is in the filter pleats. Or more specifically, if there is evidence in the pleats, I'd say it's only part of the story. The typical FF filter is only reasonably efficient at 20um and above, whereas there's a whole lot of info one can glean from a UOA because the ICP spectrometry is sensitive to particles at and below 5um. Most normal wear is small particle, not huge chunks. If you've got a lot of large particle debris in your filter pleats, you've got problems a LOT larger than worrying about the UOA costs ...
Further, there are some decent SAE studies that acknowledge a reasonable correlation between UOAs and wear trending, when compared to other methodologies of wear assessment such as component weight loss, or particle bombardment.
UOAs are a tool, and one has to know both the benefits and limitations to get the usefulness out of them.