Oil Analysis Reports

[CamasM3e93]

Just got my first oil report back on Rocky since moving the car from BMW 10w60 to Red Line 5w50. Seeing high silicon levels which can either be due to an additive in the Red Line oil or dirt passing the filter. I am using a Pipercross foam filter and wondering if anyone else has run into high silicon levels, and whether they are running a foam air filter or using Red Line. Or in my case both. I perused the thread and didn't see anything to guide me. Have a question into Red Line and sometimes they do respond.

Pipercross has some guidance for track use only on some of their filter products but my understanding is it doesn't apply to the one I've got installed.

11 M3-220724.pdf

Thanks, all.

[E46XITOE92M3]

Why are you running 5w50

[CamasM3e93]

Originally Posted by E46XITOE92M3

Why are you running 5w50

Redline 5w50 is equal to the BMW and Castrol 10w60 spec products (RL 10w60 is considered too heavy). Red Line's synthetic oils are ester based which is considered a step up in lubrication and engine protection from the Mobil 1 / liquid moly / castrol / BMW synthetic oils, especially in high revving engine applications. There's a nice little thread somewhere from one of the S65/S85 aftermarket engine builders showing a wear comparison and he advocates for RL 5w50. Here, the metal counts show the 5w50 is performing exceptionally well.

I've got a couple questions in to Pipercross and Red Line.

Update:

Spoke with Pipercross and they confirmed the px1828 is designed for daily driving and that they do run into counterfeit parts on the market. I had purchased mine from an eBay reseller and it's a risk.

Spoke with Red Line and they confirmed that the expected value of silicon in 5w50 is 20 for the additives they use and that because they don't disperse a sample may measure higher. Similar narrative from Blackstone.

I have never liked the design of the air filter and how it essentially presses against the plastic adapter on the engine side of the intake and is sealed and held into place by a spring tension on the edge of the airbox. I decided that 70ish on the silicon was a little too high for my comfort (meaning I felt the risk I was pulling in unfiltered air and dirt was too high ) and purchased a K&N filter as an alternative.

Pulled the airbox and filter mechanism apart this morning and put my hand inside the intake elbow: Grit. No bueno. Cleaned that out and installed the new filter. Was pleased to see the K&N has a different design and snaps into the plastic adapter with a rubbery seal and I think significantly reduces the chance for unfiltered air to get sucked into the intake. Now I wonder if this is the OEM design. Glad I follow my oil reports, this condition could have gone on a lot longer.

Pictures show the dirty towel from the intake, how the Pipercross as purchased simply presses against the intake adapter, and how the K&N fits snugly into the adapter well enough to defy gravity and then some.

[edycol]

Originally Posted by CamasM3e93

Redline 5w50 is equal to the BMW and Castrol 10w60 spec products (RL 10w60 is considered too heavy). Red Line's synthetic oils are ester based which is considered a step up in lubrication and engine protection from the Mobil 1 / liquid moly / castrol / BMW synthetic oils, especially in high revving engine applications. There's a nice little thread somewhere from one of the S65/S85 aftermarket engine builders showing a wear comparison and he advocates for RL 5w50. Here, the metal counts show the 5w50 is performing exceptionally well.

I've got a couple questions in to Pipercross and Red Line.

None of ghat is true except that RL 10W60 is too heavy.
Final product is what matters, and that is achieved by using various base stocks. RL is ester based, but Mobil1 has a lot of ester in their FS and ESP oils. Problem is starting oxidation of ester oils and unbalanced additive package of RL that somehow always has high silicon, which is not good for street driven cars.

As for wear, people have to understand that UOA is not designed to measure that. It can show spike in metals to point to an issue (rod bearings) but wear can only be determined by tearing down engine. All those ball tests etc. are just bunch if nonsense. I don't remember any from my days of oil development and testing.

[bhowelett]

Originally Posted by Assimilator1

Well, I hope you have a V8 screaming for you again, putting a smile back on your face soon (whether this one or another).
Keep us posted on the outcome of this one.

Hey there, sorry I didn't provide an update sooner ( I haven't been active on here much since the accident).

My car was indeed deemed a total loss. Thankfully I really didn't lose too much money. Just a bit lost on my mods, X pipe, tune, etc. Since the market was up at the time, that helped the payout.

I did end up getting into another V8. Though not a E9X; or a Bimmer.

[CamasM3e93]

Originally Posted by edycol

None of ghat is true except that RL 10W60 is too heavy.
Final product is what matters, and that is achieved by using various base stocks. RL is ester based, but Mobil1 has a lot of ester in their FS and ESP oils. Problem is starting oxidation of ester oils and unbalanced additive package of RL that somehow always has high silicon, which is not good for street driven cars.

As for wear, people have to understand that UOA is not designed to measure that. It can show spike in metals to point to an issue (rod bearings) but wear can only be determined by tearing down engine. All those ball tests etc. are just bunch if nonsense. I don't remember any from my days of oil development and testing.

Ok, Boomer…. You almost hit the trifecta there. I'm not really interested in a debate on oil viscosity, oil brands, nor the value of oil analysis - but thank you for posting. If you need me, I'll be on another thread debating the true cause of rod bearing failures and which is the very best exhaust setup.

[IamFODI]

Originally Posted by CamasM3e93

Ok, Boomer…. You almost hit the trifecta there. I'm not really interested in a debate on oil viscosity, oil brands, nor the value of oil analysis - but thank you for posting. If you need me, I'll be on another thread debating the true cause of rod bearing failures and which is the very best exhaust setup.

He's right, though.

[edycol]

Originally Posted by CamasM3e93

Ok, Boomer…. You almost hit the trifecta there. I'm not really interested in a debate on oil viscosity, oil brands, nor the value of oil analysis - but thank you for posting. If you need me, I'll be on another thread debating the true cause of rod bearing failures and which is the very best exhaust setup.

I am not sure where you going to be, but that doesn't change facts.

[Remonster]

Originally Posted by CamasM3e93

.

Nice job finding and eliminating the source of all that dirt getting into your engine. I always hated foam filters for any kind of street use for this reason. I've seen way worse levels of junk getting through foam filters even when they had zero leaks around them, the typical JDM brand ones are the worst.

[widetyres]

Originally Posted by CamasM3e93

Redline 5w50 is equal to the BMW and Castrol 10w60 spec products (RL 10w60 is considered too heavy). Red Line's synthetic oils are ester based which is considered a step up in lubrication and engine protection from the Mobil 1 / liquid moly / castrol / BMW synthetic oils, especially in high revving engine applications. There's a nice little thread somewhere from one of the S65/S85 aftermarket engine builders showing a wear comparison and he advocates for RL 5w50. Here, the metal counts show the 5w50 is performing exceptionally well.

I've got a couple questions in to Pipercross and Red Line.

Update:

Spoke with Pipercross and they confirmed the px1828 is designed for daily driving and that they do run into counterfeit parts on the market. I had purchased mine from an eBay reseller and it's a risk.

Spoke with Red Line and they confirmed that the expected value of silicon in 5w50 is 20 for the additives they use and that because they don't disperse a sample may measure higher. Similar narrative from Blackstone.

I have never liked the design of the air filter and how it essentially presses against the plastic adapter on the engine side of the intake and is sealed and held into place by a spring tension on the edge of the airbox. I decided that 70ish on the silicon was a little too high for my comfort (meaning I felt the risk I was pulling in unfiltered air and dirt was too high ) and purchased a K&N filter as an alternative.

Pulled the airbox and filter mechanism apart this morning and put my hand inside the intake elbow: Grit. No bueno. Cleaned that out and installed the new filter. Was pleased to see the K&N has a different design and snaps into the plastic adapter with a rubbery seal and I think significantly reduces the chance for unfiltered air to get sucked into the intake. Now I wonder if this is the OEM design. Glad I follow my oil reports, this condition could have gone on a lot longer.

Pictures show the dirty towel from the intake, how the Pipercross as purchased simply presses against the intake adapter, and how the K&N fits snugly into the adapter well enough to defy gravity and then some.

Thanks for posting your Red Line UOA - I am considering using this also.

I have just moved to an E92 M3, but had a Pipercross drop-in filter on my previous M2 - one day I had the inlet pipe off, and after ~5K miles using the Pipercross the turbo blades were very scored, presumably with grit etc that had got past the filter. I will never use their filters again - really poor at doing their main purpose.

[Assimilator1]

Coming back on topic, here is my OA for my M3.

The oil, Mobil 1 10w/60 is 2 years old, done about 3600 miles including 3 track days and one lap of the Nurburgring.
The rod bearings were changed (to ACL mixed and hand measured shells by Mporium) just prior to this fill.
When I drained the oil it came out quite dark, I was a little concerned that with 3 track days I'd pushed it too far. But according to the OA report it was fine (soot 0.1%) , so no need to change your oil after every track day!
Fuel dilution was a little on the high side, although still quite some way from their 'cautionary' limit of 2-3.9%.

Unfortunately they don't give the viscosity @40C nor the soot limits (I have since asked them about this). [edit. They got back to me, see post below].

[Assimilator1]

Millers got back to me about my questions (pretty promptly ).

No charge for the additional viscosity measurement, at 40oC the viscosity is 134 cSt giving a viscosity index of 175, fairly typical for a quality multi-grade oil.

New oil spec is 156 cSt @40C and 22.7 cSt @100C. Interesting to see the old oil was thinner cold than new, seems good to me!
The VI is virtually the same as new too (which is 174), curious as I thought the VI would typically reduce as the oil ages.
Would be interesting to see what those viscosities convert to in terms of oil grades...

And these are the soot guidance levels - The limits for soot are ‘caution’ at 1 % and ‘critical’ at 2 %, your sample at 0.1 % is absolutely fine.

[S65Hunter]

Hasn't been alot of activity on this thread lately so hopefully I'm posting in the correct thread... here's my results, from blackstone as you can see they said everything seems A Okay. Just wanted to get M3post's take. Thanks

[IamFODI]

Originally Posted by AlpineE93

Hasn't been alot of activity on this thread lately so hopefully I'm posting in the correct thread... here's my results, from blackstone as you can see they said everything seems A Okay. Just wanted to get M3post's take. Thanks

The numbers don't show any obvious signs of trouble. That doesn't necessarily mean everything's fine; just that there's no evidence of a problem on the oil analysis.

[S65Hunter]

Originally Posted by IamFODI

The numbers don't show any obvious signs of trouble. That doesn't necessarily mean everything's fine; just that there's no evidence of a problem on the oil analysis.

Don't rain on my parade
On a real note, I was mainly just interested to know about the wear on the RBs. They were replaced a couple thousand miles prior to me purchasing it but they had used OEM bearings so I was just interested to see what the analysis said.

[IamFODI]

Originally Posted by AlpineE93

Don't rain on my parade
On a real note, I was mainly just interested to know about the wear on the RBs. They were replaced a couple thousand miles prior to me purchasing it but they had used OEM bearings so I was just interested to see what the analysis said.

Since 2010/2011, OE BMW bearings have been of a lead-free type. You'll see a lot of people saying oil analysis can't tell wear on these bearings, but that's an overstatement; the truth is we don't know either way.

That might be because these rod bearings don't seem to wear significantly. People assumed they did because they discolor with use, but it's recently been shown that the discoloration is superficial. It doesn't seem like we've ever seen a set of these rod bearings in a critical wear state in anything like normal use.

The thing to look for would be aluminum and tin spiking together in a roughly 9:1 ratio. Theoretically, lots of other things in the engine could produce those metals; in practice, these engines don't seem to spike aluminum for any other reason. And, let's be honest – if you see an aluminum spike, you know you'll be opening up your engine anyway no matter where you think the aluminum is coming from.

Or you could wait for copper. That'd mean the top layer of the rod bearing has worn away, exposing the last-ditch intermediate layer. Though, if recent evidence is any indication, you'd be waiting a VERY long time for that.

Either way, the current OE rod bearings seem fine, so... you're probably fine. Go ahead and send it!

[Assimilator1]

Originally Posted by AlpineE93

Don't rain on my parade
On a real note, I was mainly just interested to know about the wear on the RBs. They were replaced a couple thousand miles prior to me purchasing it but they had used OEM bearings so I was just interested to see what the analysis said.

When were your bearings replaced?

[S65Hunter]

Originally Posted by Assimilator1

When were your bearings replaced?

Around 76K miles, the car is now just over 80K.

[Assimilator1]

Ah ok, I was after the rough date though rather than mileage, but I guess with just 4k on them it is at most a few years?

In which case they'll be the later bearings, which are made from tin, alu and copper. Their is no lead to track those with (not that lead tracking is a sure fire way to ensure rod bearing condition anyway!). I take it you didn't tell Blackstone that new bearings had been fitted?
Also, in general those type bearings fair better than the earlier OEM lead/copper bearings, although they still show some abnormal wear.

[S65Hunter]

For shits and giggles, here's my oil analysis for my 93 GMC C1500

[Assimilator1]

S65Hunter What mileage has it done?
Btw, did you know your email address is on display?

[nowayout]

Here is my report from a car I just purchased. 2008 with original bearings and 110k miles

Those copper and lead numbers have me feeling a bit shaky