Why Waste Money on a UOA?

[slingha]

Here's my stupid question of the day...At $25.00, why not just change the oil according to the Owner's manual?

Ok...So you want to stretch your OCI....I hear you, but you are locked into periodic OCI's for the life of your car. Im sure the oils degrades differently as the car ages... So while an extended oci sounds great, if you don't keep shelling out for the UOA's you could be doing more damage over the long run.

For the 25 bucks per, just use that money to change your oil more frequently.

Many Synthetic oils are 25 dollars or less for a 5 qt jug.

Just my opinion.

 

[Quattro Pete]

People waste money on lots of things. If it makes you happy, why not. It is BITOG after all. For some, it's a hobby of sort. In addition to establishing a safe OCI, a UOA can also help detect fuel dilution and coolant leak issues, among other things.

You'll also find people wasting money by dumping their oil every 3K miles.

 

[volk06]

They help identify if there's contamination like coolant. Also these are some peoples hobbies, everyone has their own.

 

[slingha]

Originally Posted By: volk06
They help identify if there's contamination like coolant. Also these are some peoples hobbies, everyone has their own.


If you want to see if there's coolant in the oil...change it.

 

[slingha]

Originally Posted By: Quattro Pete
People waste money on lots of things. If it makes you happy, why not. It is BITOG after all. For some, it's a hobby of sort. In addition to establishing a safe OCI, a UOA can also help detect fuel dilution and coolant leak issues, among other things.

You'll also find people wasting money by dumping their oil every 3K miles.


Dont disagree with the wasting money on the 3k flush. Do what the manual tells you. On the same token your safe OCI would be a living, breathing thing as the motor ages. So what may be ok on a 1 year old car may not be the same on a 5 year old car

 

[SilverC6]

You're preaching to the wrong congregation.

This is BITOG.

Normal people who like cars do it the way you're recommending.

Others get their oil changed when they think about it (never), the oil light comes on, or their brother-in-law who is a mechanic happens to be over for a visit.

 

[zerosoma]

Oil analysis tells you a lot of important things about your engine. I don't go crazy with them but about once a year I'll send in for both cars with an oil I like to run.

 

[TiredTrucker]

Originally Posted By: slingha


If you want to see if there's coolant in the oil...change it.


And that will show you what? You can have a trace of coolant that is the start of say a head gasket leak and the UOA would show that trace amount of glycol that you couldn't see visually. And what if a bearing was being scoured on the crank? You would not be able to tell that from just changing oil, but the UOA would show the spike in tin and lead. Your view of what a UOA is for is pretty myopic.

 

[volk06]

Originally Posted By: slingha
Originally Posted By: volk06
They help identify if there's contamination like coolant. Also these are some peoples hobbies, everyone has their own.


If you want to see if there's coolant in the oil...change it.


You completely missed the point.

If there's that much coolant your already in trouble. If you had an UOA you could have stopped the leak before it was serious. Coolant in oil is not good. You have increased wear and sludge and this starts before you can see it in the oil.

 

[demarpaint]

If I suspected a problem, like coolant was disappearing and my pressure tester couldn't find it, or suddenly fuel economy hit the skids, then maybe. Otherwise I don't see much value, at least for me.

If I decided on doing extended OCI's I'd consider it, but our driving profile sticks us in the severe service camp, and I'd rather mess with what's worked well in the past.

 

[901Memphis]

A uoa could detect coolant long before your eyes see it missing from the reservoir.

Also once you establish trends with a certain oil there is no reason to not continue doing the extended changes even without the UOA. I don't see how it would change much with vehicle age.

 

[Donald]

If money was tight I would probably go 7500 on ST synthetic and call it a day and hope for the best like 99.9% of the motoring world does.

As the size of the sump goes up the UOA becomes more reasonable. My Cummins is 3 gallons of oil. At this point I did a UOA at 12K and will be doing another at 18K to verify that T6 is good to 18K in my diesel.

My Jeep has higher than I would like to see Silicon and CU. How would I know about either without a UOA?

I am paying around $19 for a complete UOA (more complete than Blackstone).

 

[gregk24]

I agree, I also think a UOA every now and then is a good idea to see how the engine is wearing as it ages, as well as check the condition of the oil itself.

 

[901Memphis]

Originally Posted By: Donald


I am paying around $19 for a complete UOA (more complete than Blackstone).



Where do you get them for $19?

 

[simple_gifts]

For many it is just a hobby; Can't really condemn anyone for that.

I suppose the thread could be title "Why Waste money draining perfectly good oil from your car?"

 

[Donald]

Originally Posted By: 901Memphis
Originally Posted By: Donald


I am paying around $19 for a complete UOA (more complete than Blackstone).



Where do you get them for $19?


I order a 10 pack from Polaris and split them with one or two other BITOG members.

 

[Eddie]

I usually have one UOA done after break-in or at ~ 15,000 miles. This just for my curiosity. I may do another at ~ 60,000 miles to see if anything of interest changes.

 

[Doog]

Originally Posted By: slingha
Here's my stupid question of the day...At $25.00, why not just change the oil according to the Owner's manual?


I do a UOA on all of my vehicles at 100-110k miles. This is when I am making my "Trade or Keep to 200k" decision. On the UOA I am looking for wear metals, fuel dilution, coolant levels that are out of the norm. It is an easy way to get the true picture of what may be going on inside the engine before I invest the money to do the 100k major service.

 

[demarpaint]

Originally Posted By: 901Memphis
A uoa could detect coolant long before your eyes see it missing from the reservoir.


This is true, so you do a UOA and come back with a perfect report showing no coolant. Now for the sake of argument 2 weeks later a problem develops and you decided not to do a UOA for another year, or 10K miles, 20K miles etc. Now what? The UOA would have been worthless in my example. It can only detect a problem if it rears its head during the interval you decided to do a report. You'd almost have to do very frequent UOA's if you're trying to prevent problems, such as a bad injector or coolant leak since they can occur at any time, and between reports. If you did them each time you changed your oil that would be the only way to tell if a problem occurred during that interval, which is very costly. I'm sure there are people doing just that too. For a snapshot or a spot check, or to extend an OCI I see no problem, but they're not foolproof and only tell about engine health at the time of the report, which is my point here.

 

[wkcars]

It's not a waste if it finds something that's cheap/easy to fix before it turns into an expensive failure. And it's not just for cars, think about jet engines that are millions of dollars each. Also, having a failure while in operation may put lives at risk.