I would echo your comments about catching failures early with sampling. I worked in heavy equipment maintenance (large mining machines) for 15 years before switching over to natural gas compression fleets which I have been doing for right at 20 years now. Couldn't begin to count how many times we have headed off a failure by seeing trends in samples, particularly true of coolant leaks into the oil and burning coolant as you mention. The fleet I help manage right now has over 200 field gathering compressors that are between 1500 hp and 4000 hp. With engines and compressors that is 400+ samples a month and it is worth the money.

All that said, I don't sample my car, my pick-up or my bikes. Maybe it seems crazy to people that I believe there is value in sampling programs and I don't use it on my personal stuff. Maybe I am crazy. It just seems to me that I pay much closer attention to my personal vehicles than what happens in industrial fleets where stuff is getting run at or over 100% load 98% of the time and nobody pays individual attention to any of it. Industrial stuff runs ***** out 24 - 7 and nobody really has personal ownership in it. Samples are the way we watch it because no operator is going to say to us that engine X has a faint weird sound developing that wasn't there before, or it "feels: different today when I put the load on it. Hell, 90% of the time when something drops a valve and rototills parts around for an hour before it finally goes down they say "Well, it never made any noise". And again, with all that said, I would never tell anyone not to bother sampling their personal stuff. It's a data point and if someone wants to invest in getting that data, more power to them.

OP, the only thing I see that I would be curious about in your samples so far is the silion. In a new engine it might be nothing and could be related to a grease or assembly lube product or something. However, it did go up a little. It could be telling you that you have dirt entry somewhere. The most likely source would be the air intake system, the seal of the air filter element being the primary thing to check. Another thing would be as Brandon has talked about, the sample collection process and the bottles being used. Nothing scary there for sure, just something to check the basic stuff, be careful in your sampling procedures, and keep an on what the trend shows.

 

Maybe the guy added a KnN in a desert environment?

 

Hard to have a base sample when you are using quarts. We got our oil in 550 gallon transporters. We would take a base sample of new oil for our oil analysis company to have a correct base to compare samples with.

We used vacuum pumps with new tubing to take samples from the dipstick hole except where we had oil sample ports. On the sample ports we flushed them well before pulling a sample.
Of course this was on industrial equipment.

 

Yep, that’s what I do in my job as well.

As far as a “zero-hour” sample, I was not referring to a virgin sample, but a sample from the engine after a heat cycle or two. This gives you a baseline for what is in the engine after flushing with fresh oil. THEN, you can compare that sample to your used oil sample at the fluid change interval to see how the engine contaminants have changed over time (i.e. how the engine is wearing).

This gives more clarity to change intervals. If the contaminant levels remain similar, you could extend change intervals. If contaminants increase dramatically, reduce the interval.

 

Oil analysis are used to check the condition of the oil, not the equipment. Yes, that sounds backwards, but that is what it is. The side effect is yes, some metallic matter comes through and that can be used as a mechanical condition to an extent. But th eobject is to see what the equipment does to the oil, and allows the end user to determine fluid and filter replacement intervals.

 

No, first and foremost oil analysis helps to diagnose a problem with the engine/equipment before it becomes a catastrophic failure. Or something more simple such as a cooler starting to fail.
As stated somewhere above, oil analysis can be used to extend oil changes or require more frequent oil changes. Some of the equipment I've worked with could hold more than 500 gallons of oil. "Turbine engines primarily"

Oil analysis can be used to determine if the oil itself is detrimental to the equipment. These type samples are normally used when changing oil providers, for instance from Shell to Mobil. Usually much research is done before swapping oil brands to determine if the oil is compatible with the equipment. Samples are taken on a more frequent schedule in this situation.

 

Oil analysis tells you about the oil, not just for determining when the oil should be changed, but the oil can tell you if something is amiss in the machinery.

I have taken countless oil samples in my years as an aviation mechanic, but never used oil analysis on any of my cars or motorcycles. Just change the oil at the specified intervals and use a name brand oil of the correct grade.

 

Any of the top brand oil will work fine, don't over think it.

 

I recently had my new to me ‘15 Jaguar XKR oil tested. It came back with a high concentration of tea & scones.

 

After seeing the new JAG add. I wouldn't admit to even owning one..