Used Oil Analysis 2021

[ThePenIsMightier]

You can't spell analysis without anal, and I love to get anal... When it comes to analysis, that is...

Anyway, rather than bumping some ancient thread, I figured it might be worth having a fresh set of eyes on oil analysis during these unprecedented times.

Does anyone still do this for their personal vehicles? I'm pretty sure I'm going to give Fluid Life (https://www.fluidlife.com/services/laboratory-services/oil-analysis/) a try. They are not far away in Hella-South-Summerside, Edmonton.

[dj_rice]

Cool. Local Canada option vs Blackstone Labs in da USA

[vengie]

AGAT Labs is super cheap.

Bring them a stock sample of your oil and a used sample.

I think its ~$30 for the test.

We use them for all of our equipment.

[ThePenIsMightier]

Cool. Local Canada option vs Blackstone Labs in da USA

That's sort of what I figured. Why mail something to America if one can avoid it?

[Inzane]

I'm pretty sure I'm going to give Fluid Life (https://www.fluidlife.com/services/laboratory-services/oil-analysis/) a try. They are not far away in Hella-South-Summerside, Edmonton.

Fluid Life is excellent. I just had a sample done recently for my 300ZXTT as I put it away for winter.

One of our local Z Club members is a long time employee there and is very knowledgeable. He did extensive testing of various oils on his 350Z and currently his GT-R, and has done samples for years for other club members' Zs as well.

I'd highly recommend them.

[haggis88]

This was something I'd never heard of before checking out North American car clubs in depth...and I had some pretty anal guys in my club in Scotland, as they say, car guys are the male equivalent of horse girls :rofl:

What are the benefits of doing this? What do you actually learn about your car from 6 months of oil?

[Darell_n]

I use Metrotech for all my oil testing at work. They are behind Deerfoot Mall up on the hill.

[dirtsniffer]

I can't see how this is worth it on any sort of modern, run of the mill vehicle

[ThePenIsMightier]

This was something I'd never heard of before checking out North American car clubs in depth...and I had some pretty anal guys in my club in Scotland, as they say, car guys are the male equivalent of horse girls :rofl:

What are the benefits of doing this? What do you actually learn about your car from 6 months of oil?

It sounds like a variety of things such as: finding out the oil you are changing was actually as good as new, weird - there's coolant in it, super high zinc or some other weird element, metal particles indicating excessive wear, fuel in oil, water in oil, copper in oil, someone used your oil as lube and then jacked-off in your oil, this brand was shit compared to last brand, your oil has preferred pronouns.

[g-m]

This was something I'd never heard of before checking out North American car clubs in depth...and I had some pretty anal guys in my club in Scotland, as they say, car guys are the male equivalent of horse girls :rofl:

What are the benefits of doing this? What do you actually learn about your car from 6 months of oil?

So what does that mean? Horse girls were down for anal in my experience, just wondering where you're going with this

[ExtraSlow]

So what does that mean? Horse girls were down for anal in my experience, just wondering where you're going with this

Horse girls are overall very down.

[Inzane]

Horse girls are overall very down.

Or, they're lesbians.

[ThePenIsMightier]

Fluid Life is excellent. I just had a sample done recently for my 300ZXTT as I put it away for winter.

One of our local Z Club members is a long time employee there and is very knowledgeable. He did extensive testing of various oils on his 350Z and currently his GT-R, and has done samples for years for other club members' Zs as well.

I'd highly recommend them.

It's roughly $30 isn't it? Their website is tailored so much for fleet equipment I'm having trouble finding much for "a guy with a car".

[mr2mike]

So find out if your motor is about to crater before it goes and sell it?
I still don't see the benefits unless you're running same oil all the time and plotting up the data across a few years.
I'm with haggis88 on this.

If you want to check how much fun someone's had revving in neutral, take a seat cushion specimen.

[ThePenIsMightier]

So find out if your motor is about to crater before it goes and sell it?
I still don't see the benefits unless you're running same oil all the time and plotting up the data across a few years.
I'm with haggis88 on this.
This ain't Kramer testing frozen yogurt.

I think it would be nice to have confirmation that changing synthetic oil "every 5k because that's what muh Gran-Pappy-ElderDingleBerry used to tells me" is certifiably dumb. Or, to examine the oil of a recent purchase, or to see how your oil looks after 20,000km because you're "pretty sure" that the modern synthetics can take it, or to see how much water is in your 16L of diesel oil in your rig rocket because it never does enough actual work to heat up.

[Tik-Tok]

I think it would be nice to have confirmation that changing synthetic oil "every 5k because that's what muh Gran-Pappy-ElderDingleBerry used to tells me" is certifiably dumb.

Spend $30 on a test to save $30 in oil?

The only people who need to test oil, are people who rebuilt their engines.

[ThePenIsMightier]

Spend $30 on a test to save $30 in oil?

The only people who need to test oil, are people who rebuilt their engines.

Not really. Spend $30 to (maybe) find out that a person could change their oil annually instead of 4x per year. That's going to pay for itself in a hurry.
*Just as a hypothetical example

[mr2mike]

Spend $30 on a test to save $30 in oil?

The only people who need to test oil, are people who rebuilt their engines.

Mine is recently rebuilt.
Spent the oil test money on more filters and oil changes.
Did a compression test after a few thousand kms to confirm its sealed nicely (free. Tester is a sunk cost).
Not trying to win the builders team award for low km summer driving series.

The only time I'd say it's of benefit is when you find oil shavings in the oil and you're too excited to find out what's failed and can't wait for the engine teardown.
But really an engine tear down will tell you more.

I think this is a bunch of iron ring'ers looking to say they got da test like they did on the last well they drilled.

[haggis88]

Yeah sounds like its irrelevant for 99.9% of people unless they want some clout on the forums. There were a bunch of threads on the Expedition forums about it and there were like 2 guys getting right in-depth about it and turns out they're metallurgists and all these regular Joes were panicking over the fact they'd been running for 10,000 miles without changing :rofl:

I long to have back my old D16 Civic Coop, I smashed that thing off the rev limiter from cold every morning and didn't do a single oil change or even an air filter in over 20,000 miles

Still couldn't kill it and when I got the H22 swapped in there, the guy who did the swap for me was even able to sell the D16 for cheap to some old lady who had a snapped timing belt!

[ragu]

Yeah sounds like its irrelevant for 99.9% of people unless they want some clout on the forums. There were a bunch of threads on the Expedition forums about it and there were like 2 guys getting right in-depth about it and turns out they're metallurgists and all these regular Joes were panicking over the fact they'd been running for 10,000 miles without changing :rofl:

I long to have back my old D16 Civic Coop, I smashed that thing off the rev limiter from cold every morning and didn't do a single oil change or even an air filter in over 20,000 miles

Still couldn't kill it and when I got the H22 swapped in there, the guy who did the swap for me was even able to sell the D16 for cheap to some old lady who had a snapped timing belt!

This, right here is BMW M car ownership…