MJBird993

That will be interesting to see. For those who are curious, it's only $25 to have the basic oil analysis done, which is really nothing compared to what we pay for farkles and such.

I'll try to do the same after I do my first oil change.

bgiere

It is really more of a curiosity than anything else at this point...To really determine if an oil is doing it's job one would need to do a series of UOA's over many 10's of thousands of miles. UOA's can be very helpful if you are doing extended OCI's or have a problem engine but in a street car it really is just for fun...M1, Joe Gibbs, Motul, etc, etc will all do just fine for these engines in 99.99% of the usage patterns.

DKC64

I also did an UOA basically for curiosity. Car is a 2013 C4S. Oil change done at 11 months, having covered 6000 miles. Conclusion is that it's all normal.

I have attached 2 other documents which is from the lab about how to interpret all the numbers.

LexVan

Here is my latest UOA.

A few notes to mention:

1) Of the 3,629 miles covered, about 1,000 were still part of the break-in process (under 4,000 RPM). The remaining miles were all normal spirited driving using the full rev range.

2) Prior to oil change, I ran a tank of fuel treated with Chevron Techron Fuel System Cleaner.

3) With almost 3 times the miles of my first test, major wear metals (Alum. and Copper) both dropped 40% or more. Iron stayed essentially flat.

4) The Joe Gibbs DT40 5W40 has more Phosphorus (17%) and Zinc (14.5%) than the factory fill Mobil 0W40. I liked seeing this and expected that.

5) I wish the viscosities were better. If I don't see an improvement there, as the DT40 becomes more concentrated with the 2nd oil change, I'll probably switch to Mobil 5W50 or Motul sometime next summer.

LexVan

I'll update this again in a few days. I just had my oil changed (3rd one) yesterday, and shipped my sample off to Blackstone last night. Should see the report by Friday/Monday.

Did about 4,600 miles on this oil. At yesterday's oil change, I switched to Mobil 5W50 from the most current Joe Gibbs DT40 5W40.

StudGarden

I thought about doing this, but wonder if it's worth starting at 15k miles with no baseline? And also, has anyone ever gotten a warranty repair based off of oil analysis? IOW, even if you discovered a problem or a trend, what could you even do about it?

LexVan

Never too late. So you baseline starts at 15,000 miles. No biggie. And in a way, my first couple reports serve as your baseline.

UOA's wont have much to do with warranty repairs.

If you discover a "problem" within your UOA, you can do lots of things:

1) change interval (shorten)
2) select a different oil brand, viscosity
3) start saving monies for a rebuild

991999R

i'm going to be taking my car in to get shut down for hibernation so i'll get one done...i have no idea what any of the data would mean but you can definitely have at 'er

budrichard

As an Engineer I was once responsible for all rotating equipment in a Nuclear power plant and Oil Analysis for that equipment. We had a strict schedule for sampling and the results were sent to our in house analysis department. We received detailed reports with chemicals found and oil properties but and this is the big but, we had actual traceable to the specific bearing, chemical analyses of all the bearings and other materials used in the equipment.
I had Engineers that specialized in oil usage in rotating equipment to help with the determination of what should be done if reading were not normal. We also had vibration and thermal analysis (thermogram) to help evaluate bearing and equipment performance whether a Diesel engine or a pump.
Without training, access to Porsche materials specifications, UOA is something to occupy your time but will tell you little if your intent is to prevent catastrophic failure if your engine.
I don't know of any Service Department that would do anything based on a UOA?
Maybe Porsche Dealerships are different and if someone could provide a documented reference to where UOA had an impact on how thier Porsche was maintained, I would certainly like to know.
As to oil, there is a lot of hype out there and Porsche's reccmandtion for Mobil ! is as good as any.
We first used synthetics in the 1970's for equipment that we could not get at easily to change oil and was expected to run 365 days minimum with no interruptions.
I long ago switched all my vehicles to Mobil 1 and 7.5K mile oil changes with zero engine problems, no UOA.
I had one Volvo go 287K miles before deterioration of the frame forced me to junk the car for safety. Engine was still going strong!-Dick

BlackSpeed

I've thought about doing oil analysis on my cars over the years, but never went through with it.
I did keep my first oil filter from my C63 and I took it apart to see how much metal was in it.
There was quite a bit (at least to my untrained eye), I did it out of curiosity and nothing more.
I'll probably keep my filter from my 911 when it gets its first oil change too.

BTW, do you ever see iron bits attached to the magnetic plug? Seems like it may sway the results on the oil testing for iron, no?

LexVan

I ask the dealership to inspect the L&N magnet billet drain plug and report. Nothing has been noted, nor am I expecting much to be said.

It's easy enough to swap out for the OE part and inexpensive. Just another step in my OCD ways of maintaining my cars. No harm. No foul.

LexVan

OK, after almost 10,000 wonderful miles (just a sunny weekend toy) since taking delivery in March, here is my 3rd oil change UOA. The Joe Gibbs DT40 5W40 has proven to be a great product. All my wear metals have really dropped like a rock.

*Prior to this oil change, again I ran a full tank of fuel treated with Chevron Fuel System Cleaner with Techron.

At this oil change, I moved to Mobil 5W50. Porsche approved. I've run this oil in other Porsches over the years with great results. I plan to run this oil all of 2015, and this time next year (after 2 more UOA's) will decide if I stay with the Mobil 5W50, go back to the Joe Gibbs DT40, or maybe try Motul 5W40. What I like about the Mobil 5W50 is the much improved SUS 210 viscosity and cSt 100 viscosity.

Car goes into storage in 2 weeks from this Saturday. I'll put about 1,000 miles on it before than, then say goodnight till mid April.

todd92

The purpose of testing oil with only 1300 miles on it is what?

chuck911

Eduardo got me using colors. Purple goes with my current avatar.

This is something I've questioned repeatedly. There are for example all kinds of sources of general information, such as for example the way main and con rod bearings are made of babbitt, a mix of different layers of various soft metals such as tin, copper, antimony, lead. But I've been unable to find anything that answers even such a basic question as does Porsche use lead or not? I totally agree, the odds of being able to get anything out of UOA without access to this sort of materials information seems slim (to none). Yet nobody seems the least bit interested in this simple fact. (Notice for example nobody else responding to your excellent points.)

Even having all this information would of course only bring us one little baby step closer. There's still the problem of UOA being so simplistic, little more than a short list of the ppm of some common elements. Your nuke bearings were probably irradiated to create isotopes that would show up in a much more sophisticated oil analysis, something along the lines of: http://www.swri.org/4org/ae/docs/rattpaper.pdf

But then, as cool (and massively OCD!) as it would be to radioisotope tag every bit of your Porsche and have your very own real-time wear readings, it just seems the whole thing could hardly be more moot. But for your post that got me searching around and finding that isotope article above, learning something new, thank you!

budrichard

http://www.swri.org/4org/ae/docs/rattpaper.pdf

Just an excellent paper! Thank for the link. SWIRL does excellent studies!
Note that in the pictures are the tri-bladed Radiation Warning sings so the Lab does have to meet NRC requirements and have an NRC License to control Radioactive Materials. A not inexpensive requirement.
Since the isotopic detection method is so sensitive, wear studies are almost done in real time as they siphon a small portion of the oil flow and then and count. Pretty sophisticated.
Our synthetic oil in the Reactor Coolant pumps did not become activated so we could check the level of radiation and release to our off site lab. But we never thought to measure the contamination in our Multi-Channel Analyzers, to determine the contamination products in the oil.
It's really a question of money and time. It would cost more than a Porsche engine is worth to reproduce this testing and of course the License required to do this.
But it is very interesting.
As to response to my points, when you have so much invested in time and effort to believe you are accomplishing something meaningful, it is very difficult to give this up.
Me, I just change the oil and filter!-Dick