dusty conditions & OCI

[meborder]

going through my owner's manual, normal OCI is 5,000 miles. under "special conditions" it lists dusty conditions such as unpaved roads as requiring a 3,000 mile OCI.

It says in there that these special conditions apply only to vehicles that frequently operate under the specified condition (there are several).

I live on unpaved roads and drive on gravel anywhere between 3 and 15 miles every day, so i would qualify that as "frequently"

so what i'm wondering is can i tell from a UOA if i should be changing the oil more frequently than the 5k listed under the normal schedule? will silicone be my smoking gun in this case?

I just mailed off a sample today on a 5k OCI, but it was a TON of long interstate trips, so i'm not sure how representative it will actually be as that 5k came in just over a month's worth of time which is about 1/2 of normal.

the rest of the story:
I just put in 7qts of PP 5w30 (silver bottle) and a Bosch Distance+ filter hoping to get through winter without changing oil in the bitter cold. I'd like to get at least 7500 out of the PP to get me into the warmer months, but i'm beginning to think that more than 5k might not be a good idea due to the gravel roads i drive.

thoughts?

2006 expedition 5.4 3v 125k miles.

 

[Quattro Pete]

Originally Posted By: meborder
will silicone be my smoking gun in this case?


Probably. And elevated silicon will most likely also result in elevated metals.

 

[901Memphis]

Except we know the 5.4 is super easy on oil, and both of those numbers are EXTREMELY conservative These engines are good for 10-15k depending on oil type and condition.

 

[CT8]

Do you follow behind people on your dirt road often?

 

[otis24]

Thinking you can easily go 7500. Maybe more! You seem to be driving far enough to get the oil up to temp. If you were doing dusty conditions AND short distances, i might be more reluctant to go longer. I expect your UOA will show plenty of life left anyway.

 

[meborder]

Originally Posted By: CT8
Do you follow behind people on your dirt road often?


try not to, but it happens. if unavoidable i try to hang back and let the dust clear, but if there is no wind there isn't much you can do.

nearly always pass at least one oncoming vehicle if i take the 7 miles of gravel on the way to work.

my air filter stays surprisingly clean, if that means anything. i check it periodically and bang out any loose dirt or blow it out with the air compressor, depending on how bad it is. usually gets replaced every 12-18 months, 24 months if i forget.

 

[demarpaint]

Here's a case where a UOA might be of value if you don't want to follow the owner manual's recommendation for driving under dusty conditions. It should show if Silicon and wear metals are elevated, and you can post it for feedback.

 

[Darwin1138]

In case of the unpaved roads the OCI recommendation is more because of the low speeds than because of the dust itself. Unless you are a rally driver you probably drive down these roads at less than 15 mph and in second gear, which is more demanding than going at 70 mph in fifth gear.

Since you are doing UOA you could try to tailor yourself an OCI by the number of hours of operation or by the amount of fuel consumed.

As for the air filter, get yourself a restriction gauge or filter minder, dispose of your actual filter and never clean it again with compressed air or by bang it it out.

 

[meborder]

Originally Posted By: Darwin1138
In case of the unpaved roads the OCI recommendation is more because of the low speeds than because of the dust itself. Unless you are a rally driver you probably drive down these roads at less than 15 mph and in second gear, which is more demanding than going at 70 mph in fifth gear.

Since you are doing UOA you could try to tailor yourself an OCI by the number of hours of operation or by the amount of fuel consumed.

As for the air filter, get yourself a restriction gauge or filter minder, dispose of your actual filter and never clean it again with compressed air or by bang it it out.


I, like everyone else, drive between 45 and 55 on the gravel roads. you get used to it and I gave up the idea of having a clean car back in 2005.

as for the air filter, it just gets dusty, why not just blow it out or bang the dust off? To do it your way I'd be replacing them monthly, which is a little spendy.

 

[meborder]

Originally Posted By: demarpaint
Here's a case where a UOA might be of value if you don't want to follow the owner manual's recommendation for driving under dusty conditions. It should show if Silicon and wear metals are elevated, and you can post it for feedback.


here was my last UOA. first one for this vehicle, and would have been very representative of the type of use the vehicle generally would see in the winter. i.e. cold starts in the bitter cold, and a generous warm up time (5-10min) before heading off (I'm not putting my 2 year old in a truck without warming it up a bit when it is well below zero).

I'm not an expert at reading these, but I'm told the wear metals are somewhat elevated, but the silicone appears to be normal. this was 6400 miles on NAPA synthetic 5w20.

I'm told the elevated metals could be due to the extreme cold starts and extended idling.

 

[Darwin1138]

Originally Posted By: meborder

I, like everyone else, drive between 45 and 55 on the gravel roads. you get used to it and I gave up the idea of having a clean car back in 2005.

as for the air filter, it just gets dusty, why not just blow it out or bang the dust off? To do it your way I'd be replacing them monthly, which is a little spendy.


In that case that must be a very well maintained gravel road, I was thinking in one more like the surface of the Moon. If you can achieve those constant speeds then consider the "unpaved" miles as highway miles.

Every time you clean the filter, you make the holes in the media bigger, reducing the efficiency of the filter, allowing more dirt into the engine and increasing the wear. If your restriction gauge tells you to change the filter too often, like every 3k or 5k miles, then consider adding a prefilter or upgrading your filter to a Donaldson Powercore

 

[TiredTrucker]

Most rural gravel roads are such that one can run up and down them 45-50 mph with no issues except maybe after a real gully washer rain storm. I live on gravel roads and some folks around me think it is a super highway sometimes.

I generally go down to about 10% on the OLM (ball park 7000 miles) on my pickup and have no real concerns, even though we have to run several mile of gravel to and from the house to get to the hard road. I tend to drive a little slower, I guess, than many folks around me, probably because I am doing a lot of looking around at crop ground, livestock, and deer. But my pickup has to "eat" a lot of dust from time to time from grain trucks or other passers by.

My heavy truck has to run these same roads. I run UOA's on it at every oil change. OEM recommendation on that engine is 15,000 miles or 300 hrs. I run it to 20,000 miles or 400 hrs and it never has any silicon spike. I would guess doing normal OCI's on your vehicle shouldn't be a problem.

As for blowing out a air filter... use one of those cans of air from Wally World that are for cleaning computer keyboards and such. A lot less pressure and lot easier on filter media. I use it once in a while myself.

 

[meborder]

Originally Posted By: Darwin1138
Originally Posted By: meborder

I, like everyone else, drive between 45 and 55 on the gravel roads. you get used to it and I gave up the idea of having a clean car back in 2005.

as for the air filter, it just gets dusty, why not just blow it out or bang the dust off? To do it your way I'd be replacing them monthly, which is a little spendy.


In that case that must be a very well maintained gravel road, I was thinking in one more like the surface of the Moon. If you can achieve those constant speeds then consider the "unpaved" miles as highway miles.

Every time you clean the filter, you make the holes in the media bigger, reducing the efficiency of the filter, allowing more dirt into the engine and increasing the wear. If your restriction gauge tells you to change the filter too often, like every 3k or 5k miles, then consider adding a prefilter or upgrading your filter to a Donaldson Powercore


adding the restriction gauge is a great idea, i think i'll look into that. i know some of the OEM's use them, but i never thought about looking in the aftermarket for a retrofit. The air box on these is rather peculiar so i'm not sure where i can make one fit, but it given the physical room to do so, i probably will.

as for ruining the filter media by blowing out or banging out the dust from it, i'd ask for a reference to a case study that shows that to be the case.

in my world, we run gravel and sand samples over metal sieves to check for gradation. the finest of which is a #200 (75 micron). these are a very fine and rather fragile (if mis-handled) calibrated metal mesh. the SOP for removing the material retained on the #200 is to invert the sieve, tap on the the rim with a wooden handle, and then brush the bottom of the sieve with stiff paint brush to push the material stuck in the screen out the top (as it was not small enough to go through the screen). Now, if you take to rubbing on the top side of the screen and force the material through with your paint brush (or worse yet a finger) you ruin it in very short order and it will pass more material than it should.

likewise, banging the dust out of the filter media (not through) or blowing the the dust out from the top side of the filter is, in my mind, no different than how we treat our calibrated sieves. I can see how you would ruin it forcing it through, but that's not what i'm talking about. I simply tap the filter out on a solid surface, blow it out from the top, and then blow air across the bottom to remove all the loose dust .... i simply cannot see any harm in that.

 

[Darwin1138]

Take a look at Widman's site (he is a member here so you may also want to check out his posts), he has some case studies here and here. Also check out his bulletins, they are really interesting. (I remember seeing them in English but I cannot find them right now).

Also one of the mayor points is that, every time you open up the airbox you allow the ingestion of dirt, check out this training module of Donaldson

 

[TiredTrucker]

I also have restriction gauges on all my vehicles. Nice touch.

 

[CELICA_XX]

I wonder if some type of pre-filter over the stock intake would help in a dusty condition such as this?

I have been thinking about rigging up something similar...

 

[meborder]

it sure could....

I think I'm going to start with the filter gauge as suggested. they are less than $20 and easy enough to install if you have a spot for them.

the more I think about this, and with evidence from two UOA's (soon to be three), dusty conditions don't really make that much of a difference. the UOA on our Subaru was perfectly fine as well with no signs of high metals or silicone. same type of use on this vehicle. same amount of gravel driving at the same speeds. and a 35 mile one-way trip to work every day.