We have a Used Oil Analysis class coming up on April 18 with Lake Speed Jr., Charles Navarro, and I.

There's more to UOA than looking at wear metals. I tend to look at the other items more than wear metals. Fuel dilution, oxidation, and retention of the anti- wear package are big items that people tend to overlook. This sometimes even includes the people giving commentary when offering UOA results. In most cases you shouldn't even look at their commentary. Sometimes I have found it laughable when an oil sample was pulled from an engine that had failed, and they said "This sample looks great, we recommend re- sampling in the future. You can also extend your service intervals if you'd like"

It does happen. So far in the last 6 months two oils changed, and were picked up by one oil company testing competing products. Both of these had stayed the same for a long time, so it was easy to see the red flag when it popped up.

Join us this Thursday to learn all about UOA.

 

I just received my first report back from SpeeDiagnostix. Timely service and a very comprehensive report. I'd recommend them, as I plan to use them going forward. You just don't get a list of values - you get explanations for them and the various categories are color coded - green, yellow, red.

 

Somewhere along the late summer or early fall of 2017, Driven revised their DT-40 formulation to decrease calcium and increase boron and moly to provide better overall protection, especially for direct injection engines. The new DI series of Driven oils takes this custom formulation a bit further to benefit direct injected engines. You may remember the caps on the DT-40 quarts were a larger size about 1.5" across, then in the fall 2017 time frame, the caps are much smaller in diameter. This change in packaging in my case happened to exactly coincide with a back-to-back UOA result that showed the different additive package. I sent Lake Speed an email and got the reply that is almost word-for-word what is in the first sentence of this paragraph.

I'm trying to switch over to DI-40 but like everyone else trying to do the same, I am waiting on backordered supply to be shipped. I have switched my 6.2L L86 engine in my 1500 Sierra over to DI-30. I also switched my UOA to Speediagnostix from Blackstone in the middle of summer 2018. Blackstone only uses an approximation of the flash point result to estimate fuel dilution, as confirmed by them when I inquired by email to find out their specific method. That alone was enough to persuade me to switch to Speediagnostix.

 

Jake, I really enjoyed the class. I think I enjoyed it more than the other online enthusiast class. I'm not sure if rebuilding an engine will be on my bucket list, but understanding how to better care for my investment makes total sense to me. I never understood what goes into the various additive packages. At first, I thought the class was just going to be about understanding an UOA and how to decipher the information, but what a bonus to learn about the oil industry and how these different brands set each other apart and how they impact these engines. The problems with carbon buildup on DFI engines, low speed per-ignitiion, etc. etc. Looking forward to future classes through The Knowledge Gruppe. Thank you!!!