Originally Posted By: gathermewool
Originally Posted By: Ducked
Originally Posted By: gathermewool
Originally Posted By: Johnny2Bad
Oil colour alone tells you very little. It's an unreliable indicator of anything, actually.
+1
However, there's a huge difference between black-looking oil with 2k miles on it and black oil with 7k miles on it. My old STI used to turn oil dark very quickly; however, the opacity changed as the miles got on. 7k-mile-old oil looked pretty gross and indicated pretty much depleted in UOA.
Reads like a fairly definite -1 to me.
I've got no such experience, but I'd say oil colour is a pretty good indication of oil colour, and it has to be caused by something.
Nope. Key word is color. Opacity, smell and other properties can tell a partial tale. While an UOA is the only definitive method of analysis, visually apparent characteristics are not completely worthless.
Like I said, the oil in my STI would look very dark, but clear and cleanish-looking after only a few thousand miles. At 7k, the oil would be less visually transparent, its characteristics would change on a piece of paper towel while checking the dipstick and its smell would even tell me it was used up.
ok, I wasn't accounting for the distinction between colour and opacity/turbidity, a real distinction, but perhaps a bit tricky to make in practice.