My oil analysis

[dodge man]

I recently had an oil sample pulled on my 2004 Cummins in my Dodge truck. It has 110,000 miles on it and the oil was Amsoil 5W-40 with about 4500 miles on it. I mainly had it pulled to check for water or fuel in the oil. The truck runs great, but I just wanted to make sure. I'm not 100% sure on how to read all of the report, but my Amsoil guy said the report was very good.

[Renze]

Why would you run an oil analysis, unless its for warranty cases, or a large marine engine with half a truckload of oil in the sump ? Oil changes according to the manual, (instead of stretching the interval a little if the sample tells its ok) is generally cheaper.

[Dmace]

Of course it was good, only Powerstrokes like to mix oil, fuel and water. ;-)
Using any additives?

[milkman636]

I'm no expert either, but I can read enough to believe that what you are doing is working. The arrow by the big zero up on the top starts thigs off right, then all the pretty zeros and single digits in the wear metals. It looks good to me.

[dodge man]

Renze, I ran the sample to check for problems. The biggest killers of a common rail Cummins is fuel or water in the oil. Usually fuel is the worst and most common, which is a sign of a stuck injector. Water would be a sign of a cracked head or blown head gasket which isn't that common unless the engine has been overheated. The truck is also fairly new to me, so this gives me an idea of the internal wear of the engine. Also I plan on changing the oil in this truck, once a year, which will probably amount to around 10,000 miles. I wanted to make sure this was going to work out for this engine. An oil change for a Cummins isn't super expensive, but if you use 12 quarts of snythetic and a good filter, its over $100.

Dmace, no additives, just oil.

[frischtr]

Why would you run an oil analysis, unless its for warranty cases, or a large marine engine with half a truckload of oil in the sump ? Oil changes according to the manual, (instead of stretching the interval a little if the sample tells its ok) is generally cheaper.

Lots of guys with expensive/high performance engines do oil analyses regularly as a precautionary measure. An oil analysis can tell you if there are problems with your engine long before they become apparent and costly to fix.

[crazyal]

Good analysis can tell you things like bearing wear. At 100k there shouldn't be much but if the numbers are elevated it would be cheap to pull the engine and rebuild it before it spins a bearing rather than trying to find a replacement afterwards.

[scrappy isb67]

Renze, I ran the sample to check for problems. The biggest killers of a common rail Cummins is fuel or water in the oil. Usually fuel is the worst and most common, which is a sign of a stuck injector. Water would be a sign of a cracked head or blown head gasket which isn't that common unless the engine has been overheated. The truck is also fairly new to me, so this gives me an idea of the internal wear of the engine. Also I plan on changing the oil in this truck, once a year, which will probably amount to around 10,000 miles. I wanted to make sure this was going to work out for this engine. An oil change for a Cummins isn't super expensive, but if you use 12 quarts of snythetic and a good filter, its over $100.

Dmace, no additives, just oil.

one time #'s look good. But a single analysis, will only tell you wear during the period that the oil was in there, not what total wear(it is a snapshot). the best way to utilize analysis is to take a samples at regular intervals(to establish a trend) by doing this, you can tell when something is about to go by higher readings on an indicator. I.E. you have 8 on one, the next sample you have 16. the 3rd sample will show 24 showing a trend of 8 per interval. now if the 4th reads 120, then you know you have a problem that is causing elevated wear.