Does anyone do UOAs on their Diesel? (Used Oil Analysis)

I've tried to do semi-regular UOAs on all my cars. Every change with some.

I use Dyson Analysis or Blackstone as labs.


Anyone doing this on their X5 35d? It would be great to build up more of a dataset by pooling results.

Unfortunately this seems a less 'gearhead' type forum, but I suspect there are some lurkers....

Comments?

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what are your results typically telling you?

Originally Posted by soldmystang

what are your results typically telling you?

Hey 'sold...

I run them on the other cars (hey from 6speed and rennlist )

Have not received the X5 yet

A

yeah i caught that after i typed my response.

i just change the oil in my F350 every 5-6k and i am done with it. while i am not negating the positives of oil testing, i am one of probably three people here that actually use their X5 as a work vehicle and as such i don't see this developing into a viable conversation.

most of these guys here will have dumped their truck prior to the 50K mark.

well except for the Australians. of course they are over at www.Xoutpost.com

I may be game...I've always toyed around with the idea but none of my other cars were valuable enough to care. Don't have the X5 yet, will have by middle of month.

What kind of sampling intervals were you planning on doing?

I may do it, I did it a couple of times with my Z4.

I did it every oil change on the M5 from ~20k to 90k... pretty much every 7500 miles

On the MDX only a few times- frighteningly clean motor, running on dino oil too!

996TT only once.

As to the value: I'm just curious at heart. There are values to UOAs, but hypothetical to me: You can extend your oil change interval (or contract it) if you see the UOAs will allow it (ie if the oil is perfectly fine at 5k, go to 6k next time). You can see if the viscosity is holding up, how much shear you get... is the detergent package holding up... You will have a baseline on wear metals. Should something catastrophic happen to an engine under warranty, a log of UOAs showing what was happening might be helpful. If you are using 'non-recommended' oils, a history of good UOAs is proof the oil is adequate. Now, if I saw a spike in bearing metal, would I do a prophylactic tear-down? erhhh, hard to say. If it was normal otherwise, I might do a dipstick sample every 1000 miles and seriously consider it.

But in the end, just kinda fun to do. An no, I don't do it on the Dakota, the F250PSD nor the Kubota!