High Pb & Cu with Redline 15W40

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I'm so disappointed with my first sample with Redline 15W40. The lead and copper levels are dramatically higher. I've used Delo 15W40 exclusively in the past with great UOA results. What possessed me to change oils is still unclear. I'll be changing out my oil tomorrow and will go back to Delo. I'll retest soon. Have any of you seen a result as this once dino has been switched to synthetic? BTW, it's a '97 7.3L PSD.

Blackstone Report
 
I really don't think that Delo can be beat ,Redline seems to show elevated metal in uoa's when first used . There has been alot of discussion about the oil. Did you notice better gas mileage ? It is good to do a couple of oil change intervals before comparing an oil.
 
Mileage did improve from 17 mpgs to 18+ mpgs, but I'm not sure if it's due to the Redline 15W40 in the engine or the Redline ATF in my tranny. A friend of mine knows the owner of Redline Oil who he'll be seeing tonight. I'll be giving him a copy of my Blackstone report to show the owner for his opinions.
 
Ever hear of "wash-out"?
Changing to synthetic, or even other brands of non-synthetic, will introduce new additives.
These can wash out accumulated sludge from the engine, and skew the first following oil analysis.
 
quote:

Originally posted by hheynow:
I'm so disappointed with my first sample with Redline 15W40. The lead and copper levels are dramatically higher. I've used Delo 15W40 exclusively in the past with great UOA results. What possessed me to change oils is still unclear. I'll be changing out my oil tomorrow and will go back to Delo. I'll retest soon. Have any of you seen a result as this once dino has been switched to synthetic? BTW, it's a '97 7.3L PSD.

Blackstone Report


Hey guy, don't worry. The ester's of the Redline oil were just cleaning the deposited crap out of your motor. If you kept using Redline, the high numbers will go away after all the cleaning is done.

Hammer
 
For an engine with 218K miles on it, that's not bad. And, the TBN is 12.5, even after 4000 miles. Pretty strong stuff. Give it atleast another oil change interval before you drop the Redline. It takes awhile to clean all the crud out of the engine.
 
quote:

Ever hear of "wash-out"?
Changing to synthetic, or even other brands of non-synthetic, will introduce new additives.
These can wash out accumulated sludge from the engine, and skew the first following oil analysis

I never thought changing to synthetic would wash out any accumulated sludge but I did use two treatments of auto-rx 15K miles ago to clean out the deposits.

quote:

Hey guy, don't worry. The ester's of the Redline oil were just cleaning the deposited crap out of your motor. If you kept using Redline, the high numbers will go away after all the cleaning is done.

Hammer

Too late...I already changed back to Delo 15W40. Even though I have an oil bypass filter, I decided yesterday after reading my Blackstone report that extended drain intervals with synthetic were not meant to be for my engine. Besides the elevated Cu and Pb and a few other slight increases what also bothers me is the doubling of my silicon from 4ppm to 8ppm. Doesn't silicon relate to good air filtration and soot?
 
You'd see this initial spike in Cu/Pb levels with RL, even in a new engine that uses these types of bearings and/or has a oil cooler, with a copper core.

What you are seeing is NOT wear in the conventional sense. It's simply the removal of the softer oxide layer from some of these bearing overlays and cores of oil coolers. Once the new chemistry has stabilized on the wearing surfaces, the Cu/Pb levels will drop dramatically. In addition, even though you've used ARX, there are still some deposits being removed from this high mileage engine. This formulation also uses a fair amount of silicon(e) as an anti-foam additive and some of the "Si" is due to that.

I'd run RL for several changes in a row before testing it and you'll see consistently excellent performance....
 
That's a darn shame. You just dumped a fine oil that was cleaning some oxidation out of your engine which led to false readings. Once the oxidation is cleaned, the false readings will subside. Oh well, I guess it's too late now.
 
i'm a TDI guy, and don't know much about the 7.3L PSD - but what's with the 4k oil changes? is that the recommended OCI for this engine?
 
quote:

Originally posted by Go_Hogs_Go:
That's a darn shame. You just dumped a fine oil that was cleaning some oxidation out of your engine which led to false readings. Once the oxidation is cleaned, the false readings will subside. Oh well, I guess it's too late now.

I couldn't agree with you more but at over $100.00 for 14 quarts...running it for only 4K is a waste of money. Had I known ahead of time that a false reading could be expected I might have stuck with the Delo which has served me well.
 
The real issue here is that you got a very misleading recommmenation from a lab that was not familar with the particular basestock and additive chemistry you switched to.

Given the # of miles on this engine and the previous oil change history, it was easy to predict these kind of results. Dyson Analysis would have caught this right away and there would have been no need to dump this lubricant prematurely....

By and large, the techs working at most oil analysis labs are NOT familar with the specific basestocks and additive chemistries used throughout the industry.
 
quote:

Originally posted by SUNRG:
i'm a TDI guy, and don't know much about the 7.3L PSD - but what's with the 4k oil changes? is that the recommended OCI for this engine?

My truck came with an aftermarket warranty which required 4K changes. Since that expired I wanted to go with extended change intervals which is why I switched to synthetic. Obviously I'm back to dino Delo and will stay with 4K intervals. Many PSD owners change it at 5K.
 
Does anyone have any links to three consecutive Redline UOA's which show the copper/lead numbers dropping?

Not a "he said, she said" but some actual UOA's...

Anybody?
 
Not to say that there aren't three consecutive UOA's that would indeed show copper and lead trending from quite high to below universal averages--I've just not seen any such reports as of yet...
 
quote:

Originally posted by fuel tanker man:
Does anyone have any links to three consecutive Redline UOA's which show the copper/lead numbers dropping?

Not a "he said, she said" but some actual UOA's...

Anybody?


Hold that thought....I will have my second UOA shortly. I had a slightly high Pb count with the 5W-30 Red Line in my 6.0 PSD (16 PPM). I'm running a bypass filter so I'm not about to drop all of the oil out of my crankcase just so I can prove the Pb will decrease. What will happen w/my second UOA is the lead won't be increased from my first UOA.
 
interestingly, your 218,000 miles ODO 7.3L PSD wear rate is very similar to my 21,000 mile 1.9L TDI...

1997 7.3L PSD
13ppm Fe x 14 (quarts) = 182 / 4 (4k OCI) = 45.5 / 7.3 (7.3 liter engine) = 6.2 ppm/quart/1000miles/liter of displacement

2004 1.9L PD-TDI
12ppm Fe x 4.5 (quarts) = 54 / 5 (5k OCI) = 10.8 / 1.9 (1.9 liter engine) = 5.7 ppm/quart/1000miles/liter of displacement

i don't know if anyone else uses ppm/quart/1000miles/liter of displacement to determine or compare wear rates (i just made it up but it may have already been in use) - but i think it gets you as close to an apples to apples comparison as you can achieve when comparing engines that are this different - and i like it
grin.gif


cheers
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