Pennzoil Platinum 5w30, 5924 miles on '08 Civic Si

[OrdnanceMarine]

Here's the second batch of oil that's been through this engine. I replaced the factory fill with Pennzoil Platinum 5w30 and slapped on a PureOne filter. I estimate that the engine consumed approximately 1/3 quart. This OCI included some work on the dyno with the Hondata K20Z3 Reflash that now allows the engine to go to 8600 RPM instead of the stock cutoff of 8200. I usually drive this car fairly gently with a few mile warm up before any real fun and when I get on it I rarely shift before 8000 RPM. This is my daily driver, so it gets about 2-3 cold starts per day with no trip being over 5.8 miles. It does take an occasional road trip but usually spends weeks at a time getting a few miles at a time and will often sit in the garage the entire weekend while we drive our CR-V around.

At 5924 miles and 8 months the maintenance minder showed 30% oil life remaining. If it wouldn't have been such a young engine I don't think I'd hesitate to leave this oil in for a good 10,000 miles. This next change will probably stay in for 8,000 miles or so and hopefully nearly all of the break in will be complete by then. So far it looks like Pennzoil Platinum agrees with this engine. No evidence of shearing after hundreds of 8000+ RPM episodes, low insolubles, healthy TBN all makes me happy. Only real change to look for next time besides break in evidence to further fall is for silicon not to jump now that I just installed an AEM cold air intake with their DryFlow synthetic filter. I live is the dusty and sandy Mojave Desert and silica is easy to come by out here which presents one potential risk of extending the OCI and not realizing that dust/sand is finding it's way into the engine until you've run it for a year or so.

Enjoy the UOA and feel free to comment. I don't mind blowing $30 on UOAs so I'll probably keep it up. It's cheap entertainment for me for the most part when everything is looking good and cheap insurance if anything looked bad.

 

[rg200amp]

Nice

 

[OrdnanceMarine]

Here's a cut-and-paste of a limited PP 5w30 VOA from 2007 I was able to dig up. If anybody knows of a more recent or more complete VOA, please post it up!

Alum 1
Iron 1
Lead 1
Moly 45
bor 53
sil 3
na 1
cal 2779
mag 10
phos 636
zinc 731

 

[ThirdeYe]

That TBN seems too high, IMO.

 

[Turk]

PP's Calcium has been going down and this shows it also.

 

[EagleFTE]

Moly is higher in the UOA than the older VOA so it would seem they haved increased the moly

 

[JAG]

The residual oil from previous fill will skew the additive levels. Previous fill had low calcium and high moly, so will skew in that direction on this current fill.

Great UOA! The very low insolubles is very rare for the length of OCI. Only negative I see is that Tin went from 0 to 3 but nothing to sweat over.

 

[Bill in Utah]

Originally Posted By: ThirdeYe
That TBN seems too high, IMO.
I don't think so.

I had a run of Castrol GTX in my timing chain Toyota (the Civic has a chain now) with a TBN of 4.4 after 6,800 miles.

A TBN of 5.5 over 6k here would not be out of the question I'd think...

The Tin is the only thing that I see that is not "normal". But with 8k shifts that is prob the least of your worries.

Nice UOA!

Take care, bill

 

[ZZman]

That looks like a 10,000 mile oil to me.

 

[ThirdeYe]

I just remember getting a 3.5 TBN in my car, which is notoriously easy on oil after 4,356 miles using Havoline, so I wasn't sure if 5.5 TBN with 2,000 more miles would seem accurate, but maybe it is.. -shrug- I wish I would've gotten a TBN when I had my last Platinum analysis done.

 

[zulu]

As long as all the clamps are tight and the sensor gromets are tight, your CAI will be fine. The Injen CAI I had on my last RSX-S always showed +/-2 ppm silicon compared to the averages, and that was with the plain jane Injen gauze filter. The Dryflow filters are a solid , well filtering peice. Nice car. Have fun with the Hondata... that was the best upgrade I ever made too.

 

[Bill in Utah]

Originally Posted By: ThirdeYe
I just remember getting a 3.5 TBN in my car, which is notoriously easy on oil after 4,356 miles using Havoline, so I wasn't sure if 5.5 TBN with 2,000 more miles would seem accurate, but maybe it is.. -shrug- I wish I would've gotten a TBN when I had my last Platinum analysis done.

Understand.

I think a lot of TBN is how those miles are put on.

Take care, bill

 

[Patman]

This is a very nice report, especially on a fresh engine! Once the break in is complete, those wear numbers should come down even more, which will really be impressive given the way this car is driven! Nice!!

 

[OrdnanceMarine]

Originally Posted By: JAG
The residual oil from previous fill will skew the additive levels. Previous fill had low calcium and high moly, so will skew in that direction on this current fill.


Makes complete sense. The factory service manual quotes oil capacity at overhaul at 5.8 quarts and generally speaking it will take a little over 5 quarts to the top hole if you let it drain for a few hours.

 

[SubLGT]

The increase in tin is not surprising, given that you are now reving the engine to a higher limit. Bearings are taking more of a beating.

 

[ThirdeYe]

Originally Posted By: Bill in Utah
Originally Posted By: ThirdeYe
I just remember getting a 3.5 TBN in my car, which is notoriously easy on oil after 4,356 miles using Havoline, so I wasn't sure if 5.5 TBN with 2,000 more miles would seem accurate, but maybe it is.. -shrug- I wish I would've gotten a TBN when I had my last Platinum analysis done.

Understand.

I think a lot of TBN is how those miles are put on.

Take care, bill


Mine was all highway in the summertime, trying to get good gas mileage. Who knows

This is still a very good report.

 

[OrdnanceMarine]

Originally Posted By: SubLGT
The increase in tin is not surprising, given that you are now reving the engine to a higher limit. Bearings are taking more of a beating.


Obviously I'm not expecting zero wear but does anyone have an idea of how much of a "wear budget" might be available? In other words, if I could run with 1ppm Sn/2000 mi would it be reasonable to expect 100/200/300k miles out of it? Even at 3ppm is that background noise? Could that be reasonably expected to show up as the bearing surfaces essentially "polished up"? I guess we'll see on the next UOA as I'll continue driving it essentially the same way.

Anyway, being that the engine is so young, I will continue to sample for UOA to develop trends. I would *think* that as long as I'm using the same oil (and it doesn't change formulation a whole lot during that time), my results would allow me to see what kind of driving affects different levels of wear metals.

 

[CATERHAM]

I'm more impressed with this high reving Honda engine than the oil.
Honda's tend to turn in good UOA's regardless of the oil used.
The PP 5W-30 in this case has sheared down to a 20 grade.
Why not just start off with a 5W-20 grade? I'm sure a subsiquent UOA would still be good.

 

[OrdnanceMarine]

One thing Blackstone didn't put in their comments that they usually do was the Universal Average OCI. I pulled my previous UOA and they listed it as 5,170 miles back in May and I doubt it's changed much since then. I'll edit the first post to include this info.

Never mind editing the first post. For whatever reason I can only modify my last post on the thread.

 

[Liquid_Turbo]

Can't go wrong w/ PP 5w30. If it's good enough for the K23A1's Turbo and HTO-06, it should be great for your 8,000rpm redlines.

Hitting VTEC in the K-Series is a little piece of automotive heaven.