Kris Murphy

Those of you that have been keeping up with my money shifting story know that last October I imploded my motor on the track, bought a 2000 C4 from copart and over the course of several weeks on my back under two cars, I installed the donor motor into my 99 C2.

When I got the donor motor I pulled an oil sample and sent it to Blackstone. I also realized that the donor motor was a Porsche Remanufactured motor with the new 997 IMS bearing. This meant that I had no idea how many miles were on the motor. The body of the car had 117K on it when crashed. Knowing when Porsche started using the new bearing, and using the Carfax, I know that the motor cannot have more than 40K miles on it which is better than I thought when I bought the donor.

So, I was surprised when I got the first report back. All of the metals were over the averages. And some of them were way over. I had no idea how long the oil had been in the wrecked car, or how many miles were on it, but the results made be a bit nervous.

I put 500 miles on it using Gibbs DT40, and changed the oil to XP9 since I was heading to the track. I got that DT40 report back, and it was much better than the first.

I got a third report when I changed the XP9 oil after 1000 miles (about half track). The third report is even better.

In my mind, this really does not make sense (although I am happy about it). One reason I could see this happening is if the motor was much newer than I thought. If there were still some break-in metals. That would be nice.

Has anyone ever had reports that keep getting better? Can it be as simple as there were a ton of miles on the oil I took the sample of? Although that does not gel with me having better results with 1000 miles than I did with 500.

Report below. (I think the high silicone #s maybe because I just installed a new sump).

Slakker

Looks like the metals are back within tolerances which is the main thing.

I've run two samples on the same batch of oil before. I got one sample after an AutoX and iron was 11. I then put 2.5 hours of track time on it and retested. The iron dropped to 3. So either there is variance in the sampling, the testing, or maybe the filter had time to clean out more of the metals from the system.

Mike Murphy

Changing the oil doesn't actually remove all the oil. Some fanatics do a dual oil change if the oil is really old or the engine has been neglected. Maybe just having done multiple changes you have gotten rid of old contaminants?

Kris Murphy

That could be it. I would venture to say that most of the oil was out after the swap. It sat for 1 week with no oil pan. On oil changes since, I have had to add a quart less than that initial fill up.

Either way, I am happy with the results.