Of course mg/L= ppm but I wanted to make that clear but all I did is make it sound goofy. ( : < /)
The point I wanted to open up to discussion is that if you didn't see the particle count, you'd think, "Oh, that's a decent UOA!" and go happily about your business. Many engine are running around in just the same sort of shape. Pretty normal and that engine has gone almost 8300 hours that way.
On the other hand, I share your heebee-jeebees at the numbers. I've got some other particle counts that I can't publish just yet, on other engines, showing counts that follow the filtration efficiency pretty well, as the test published by btanchors. On mine. look at how the particles drop off radically around the nominal rating of the filter, 25u. At least one of them, and possibly this one, will be getting a bypass filter and we'll see.
As for the soot number, 0.8 % is pretty good. The usual universal condemnation is 3-4 % with 2.5 % the cautionary level. FYI, at 45 hours, the soot level was 0.680 %.
Here are some results I can release.
Racor LFS, 569 elapsed miles, Ford 6.9L diesel
The oil had two years and 1682 miles on it for the "before" test.
Before/After
ISO Code 18/15 16/13
Particles >2 Micron- 4393 1250
Particles >5 Micron- 1627 463
Particles >10 Micron- 450 129
Particles >15 Micron- 174 49
Particles >25 Micron- 41 11
Particles > 50 Micron- 4 1
Particles > 100 Micron-0 0
The Racor LFS is their old system, rated at 7u nominal. The new ABS system is tighter, with a choice of 3, 5 and 10u absolute elements.
