Engine oil analysis after 6,000 miles.

[Willie]

Well as most of you will know by my posts I've been using Millers oils since my cars 20,000 miles service. Since I bought the car (new 21 miles on the clock) I have been using Optimax and then V Power for every fill up.
My car is now at 92,000 miles and the last three services have been done after 6,000 miles with Millers Oil XF long life. This is quite expensive at £65 for 5 Litres but at least it is sold in 5L and not 4L like every other company (need 5L for a full fill, cheeky!!!)
Anyway since going on about Millers oils on here I discovered pretty quickly that we have a forum member that works for said company and quickly we got chatting about their products and services. During these conversations it came to light that Millers oils for £30 will analyse your used oil and give you a full run down of how it has performed and how your engine has performed and worn throughout this period.
I had planned to do this more recently but due to one thing or another I didn't manage to do this.
But the last time I changed my oil I got a sample.

What I did was when draining the oil out the sump plug I let it drain for a few seconds then took an in stream sample of about 200mls in a sample bottle (liberated for work, cheers)
This was packaged up and sent to Miller's oils for sampling. As they knew which oil it was I was using this allowed then to analyse this to see what extra 'stuff' was in the oil that wasn't there when it left the factory.

Initially:

This is the data for a unused sample of XF Longlife 5w/30 - because of the slight variation between different blends i've taken the following as a average:-

Viscosity @ 100C - 11.9cSt (Centistokes)
Density @ 15C - 0.8520gm/cm-3

Calcium Level - 0.140% wt/wt
Zinc Level - 0.076% wt/wt

(Calcium & Zinc are used as anti-wear/anti-oxidation etc)

....and obviously there are no metals/contaminants present in the unused oil as its a fully synthetic oil (none of the materials used in a fully sythetic come out of the ground, so its 100% clean.

Your used engine oil comes back with the following:-

Viscosity @ 100C - 11.8cSt (so very very tiny amount of molecule breakdown, very resistant to shearing)

Density @ 15C - 0.8620gm/cm-3, tells me your engine is very clean, and the used oil is even cleaner!

I was expecting, your used oil to be more black, but i didnt even have to spin it on the centrifuge to seperate the carbon deposits so I can do a infa-red scan. Very impressed with how clean it is, and it tells me your engine internals must be bloody clean!!

Calcium Level - 0.127% wt/wt
Zinc Level - 0.076% wt/wt

So the Calcium level has depleated by 0.013% and Zinc has not depleated at all so your engine was FULLY protected right upto you doing the oil change used engine oil sample, the additive pack will have been good for another 6,000miles plus in my opinion.

Here comes the important (and potentialy quite costly bit)

Wear Metals Analysis

Chromium - 1ppm
Lead - 3ppm
Nickel - 1ppm
Tin - 5ppm
Boron - 0ppm
Iron - 21ppm
Molybdenum - 2ppm
Silicon - 28ppm
Copper - 10ppm

All the above are represented in ppm (parts per million)

The wear metal data for your engine oil tells me:-

You can ignore all the elements that have 5ppm or less, this is likely to be what is known as 'background noise' because the levels its detecting are so low, 5 part per million is a ridiculas tiny amount (like compairing earth to the sun)

So the only wear you have is Iron & Copper. However these two figures for these two elements are well below average for 6,000 miles in a 200BHP engine.

I'll give you a comparrison; a suburu WRC that has done ONE weekend rallying will have about 30ppm Iron & 40ppm Copper wear.

 

[Willie]

From these results I asked how he thought my engines health was.

Reply:

Your engine is in immaculate condition from the chemical analysis of its medium (the oil).

I still need to look at the infa-red scan of it, which may show me signs of nitration (blow-by) - and I need to see the TBN before I can give you an answer on how often it needs changing.

I'd say V-Power/Optimax and the high additive pack within Millers products has made/kept your engine as clean as possible.

From my experience in my job, I'd say your current driving style would still protect your engine components 100% up to 10,000miles.

My driving style throughtout this period has been what I class for me is normal. I buy a fast car to enjoy it, I drive it hard and fast for sustained periods of time BUT I always let it warm up and cool down before and after a hard drive. I never drove considering that I was getting this analysis done so the results are 100% true of how my car has to live, the hard way
I haven't done any track days in my car yet but this next service period I will have done an 800 mile round trip to the SCN National meet and at least two track days with probably 1 1/4 mile drag day aswell.

So this sample will give me a base figure for what my normal driving does to my cars engine internals and oil. The next one will be a more extreme version of this. These results will be kept for me by Millers and compared plotting wear and the oils performance.

All I can say is so far the extra money that I have spent on the best oil and fuel for my car I have never minded paying for. When you get results like this back from a car with a reletively hard life at 92,000 miles then it seems like it was all worth it.
There are still some results to come in for this so as they come in I will post them up for all to see.

Hope this is of interest to other members

 

[traumapat]

very informative! good post

 

[DPJ]

Yes, interesting information!

 

[kegger]

What a good piece of information Its good to see how much we really benefit by looking after our engines!

 

[LEE69]

Good info, just shows it pays to look after a car well.

 

[highguyuk]

Excellent post, thanks

 

[andycupra]

i presume this service is only available when you have been using their oils?

 

[JamesL]

I'd guess so yeah, becuase they need to compare it to a base to see how your engine has reacted differently.

Maybe I'll look into millers oils next time, could be interesting to see what results I got back if I did this

 

[Willie]

Thanks guys, I'd hoped this would interest you. I know its purely about my engine but its good to see that with the results so far evrything looks peachy.
This service is open to users of other oils but as said above its difficult to get such an accurate base rate until you know 100% whats in your oil.
Perhaps if your using one of the major brands they might provide this service too.

TBH when I found out about it I thought this would and should be something that these major companies would advertise and promote. To me this is invaluable information that I wish I had known I could have gotten access to years ago. One thing for sure I'll be using this service for a long time coming. This firmly places my faith in Millers oils being the best out there for me, well done Miller's great service.

 

[ChrisGTL]

I forgot to add Aluminium to your 'Wear Metals' Junior Senior.

The value is 0ppm anyway


As said above RE using non- Millers oils & the facility to test, yes we can but there are limiting factors of how much info I could give when presenting the results.

Wear metals is quite a good tool as it can potentialy show a major failing part before it actualy fails - hauliers love this info as it gives them a pre-warning to get the truck off the road before it breaks down, the mechanics can then schedule an engine to be stripped down or replaced - potentialy saving them alot of time/money.

As we know any brand of oil will not have any metal contaminents the analysis works for any brand of oil, things like viscosity/infa-red scan are more difficult as some oil blenders don't publish this info on their websites.

 

[lil3520]

Great post.

 

[JamJay]

Nice to know the expensive oil and V-Power are working

 

[edh]

Good stuff - out of interest Junior Senior how long time-wise had the oil been in for these 6,000 miles before the analysis?

I only do about 6-8,000 miles a year in my LC but a VW specialist told me it's worth doing an oil change every 6,000 miles or 6 months (this was after I'd had to have a new turbo!). I thought this sounded a bit like overkill in terms of the time period so would be interested to hear how long between yours considering what good condition it was in. I use V Power, fully synthetic oil and do the warm up/down thing when driving hard.

Anyone else change oil this often when doing pretty low mileage??

 

[andycupra]

could someone explain to me how the use of V power contributes to clean oil?
thanks

 

[traumapat]

could someone explain to me how the use of V power contributes to clean oil?
thanks

the oil lining the bore would pick up less carbon deposits due to cleaner combustion?

 

[ChrisGTL]

could someone explain to me how the use of V power contributes to clean oil?
thanks

Don't quote me on this but I believe that V-Power, or any other 'high performance' fuel on the market has a more complete combustion than a lower spec fuel.

If the fuel only partialy combusts then the by-products of that is solid carbon (soot) along with other non-visable nasties.

This is my take on it, but if anyone else has more of an idea then shout up.

 

[Willie]

Good stuff - out of interest Junior Senior how long time-wise had the oil been in for these 6,000 miles before the analysis?

I only do about 6-8,000 miles a year in my LC but a VW specialist told me it's worth doing an oil change every 6,000 miles or 6 months (this was after I'd had to have a new turbo!). I thought this sounded a bit like overkill in terms of the time period so would be interested to hear how long between yours considering what good condition it was in. I use V Power, fully synthetic oil and do the warm up/down thing when driving hard.

Anyone else change oil this often when doing pretty low mileage??

That 6,000 miles would have been about 6 months.
But it wasn't the time that caused me to change the oil, it was more the mileage. Also knowing that I was getting the oil analysed and wanting to see how this had performed after this period of time. This is probably how long I will leave the service schedules when the car gets tracked so will see how these figures compare then.
TBH I wouldn't say that 6 months is a guide I would go with, especially with modern oils etc.
By the looks of it my car which is given quite a hard time on 6,000 miles services with Millers oils is doing fine, no reason why yours shouldn't. If I wasn't tracking my car I would now be doing 10,000 miles between my next services then have the oil analysed again to see how it has done.
I hope to fine tune my services so I get the best out of the oil and service periods before damage occurs.

 

[LEE69]

Mine gets changed every 6k.

 

[Willie]

Lee I had this stuck in my head too, but being as I am one who always wants to understand and know whats going on I wanted to know if 6,000 miles was the right thing to do for my driving style. I don't mind spending what ever the car needs but I don't like waste. IMHO whats the point of changing oil at 6,000 miles when it has another 10,000 miles of wear/use in it?
Now it seems like 6,000 miles on normal driving is not getting the best out of the oil for me.