13 GS350 13mo extreme short tripper VSP 0w20 5162m

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Hey everyone,

Here is a UOA on my mothers 2013 GS350 AWD, car is driven locally with the occasional road trip once or twice per year. The majority of these miles are 2-3 miles at a time with TONS of cold starts and incomplete warmups. Car is located in Marquette, MI and had one winter on this OCI, oil was changed this spring and I just got around to sending the sample in.

I wanted to verify that a 1 year OCI was safe for her car, was mainly looking for fuel dillution and wear metals. Metals line up alright with universal averages, and fuel isn't out of control. Will continue with annual oil changes. Current fill is VSP 0w20 Max Life. This UOA isn't Max Life, just standard VSP. I'll sample again in the spring and likely yearly for trending.

 
Thanks for posting. Evidently, the fuel control system works well and the engine is a quality unit. For me, I expect that from Toyota. I have 2 Toyota engines now, a 1NZ-FE 1.5L and a 2UZ-FE 4.7L V8. The UOA for the V8 that works hard for a living was an excellent result.

LINK
 
Bigj_16,

Someone already beat me to it, but yes the engine is direct injection, however it also uses port injection in combination with the direct injection.
 
I didn't mention this in the original post and it might be worth noting. I didn't do this oil change a friend of mine back home did in conjunction with swapping over winter for summer tires. I had asked him to make sure the car was good and warm to prevent any start up fuel dilution from tainting the sample. He did make sure that it was good and warm but part of doing so he drove the car pretty spirited with several WOT runs for about 20 minutes. I'm curious if that driving immediately before pulling the sample resulted in the small depression in flash point or is possibly making fuel dilution look worse than it is. Perhaps it didn't matter at all, I'm not sure. Next year I'll pull a sample myself without the WOT runs immediately beforehand and see what the numbers say. Either way I'm really impressed with this engine from a driving standpoint, it's night and day faster than my 2004 ES330!
 
If a short drive like that cleaned up any fuel dilution then it must have been nothing to worry about. Fuel probably starts to evaporate up out of the oil as soon as the oil starts to move around and warm up. Your idea of maybe cruising home after a short drive and doing the sample while the oil is warm but not all the way up to normal operating temperature might give you a better idea of what you're up against when short tripping.
 
Originally Posted By: kschachn
Honestly, it has been shown on here that Blackstone has no idea how much fuel is in your sample.


It's good enough for what I need. Sure it's not GC, but it works for me. Viscosity still in grade, flash point at 380 tells me it's not terrible, especially considering the car never gets warm on 90% of its trips.
 
Originally Posted By: FlyNavyP3
Originally Posted By: kschachn
Honestly, it has been shown on here that Blackstone has no idea how much fuel is in your sample.


It's good enough for what I need. Sure it's not GC, but it works for me. Viscosity still in grade, flash point at 380 tells me it's not terrible, especially considering the car never gets warm on 90% of its trips.

That's the way I feel, also.
 
Originally Posted By: kschachn
If you all say so. But if you look back at threads on this topic the numbers they sometimes provide aren't even close.

Understood. But how much do you want to pay for a UOA? If this were an aircraft engine, wherein failure could be a bad thing, or a really expensive engine, wherein failure could be a bad thing :), I can know, within reasonable expectations, that based on what I smell, and a UOA from Blackstone, I have some fuel dilution. To me, in my truck engines, it doesn't matter if it's .5% or 1.5% or 2.5%. I know it has some, and I am just going to back up oil changes, until it is less. That is what I would do, anyway, if I did know the exact percentage.
 
Last edited:
Originally Posted By: kschachn
If you all say so. But if you look back at threads on this topic the numbers they sometimes provide aren't even close.


I'm more concerned about viscosity staying in grade than the exact fuel percentage. That's what really matters to me, had it dropped out of grade I'd consider more often OCI or a heavier oil for my mom. It gets changed in the spring every year so that it gets a fresh start on warm weather with fresh oil. With the really low miles she puts on I think a 6 month OCI would be excessive. That being said I'm not comfortable going beyond a 1 year OCI out to 10,000 miles.
 
Was this oil entirely VSP ? With the lower sodium number and some moly from a previous fill it makes me wonder. The sodium number in particular
 
Originally Posted By: PimTac
Was this oil entirely VSP ? With the lower sodium number and some moly from a previous fill it makes me wonder. The sodium number in particular


This was just 0w20 VSP all 7 quarts. Previous fill was whatever Lexus serviced it with, likely TGMO. I expected to see higher sodium as well, closer to 400 ppm. Next spring will be more telling for sodium as it's currently filled with VSP Max Life 0w20.
 
Originally Posted By: kschachn
If you all say so. But if you look back at threads on this topic the numbers they sometimes provide aren't even close.


Kschachn, you are entirely right in questioning Blackstone's results. I find some comments really frightening but they're also not analysts, so take into perspective this is not what they do for a living. Molakule is the ONLY guy I'd bother reading on BITOG.

1. In all my testing, we debunked the myth that fuel dilution disappears on start up or after warm up. At tribologik we did close to 40 back to back tests with vehicles from V8's, I-4's, V-6s, and a V10. The most I saw was a .8-1% difference.

2. Fuel does not evaporate on start up, another myth of the industry, today's fuel chemistries force the oil to bond to the fuel.

3. His oil isn't in grade. Tribologik's supercomputer would have flagged that sample all day for fuel dilution based on viscosity measurement. And I HATE vis measurements.

4. His flash point at 380 + 6.97 @ 5,000 in my computer model approximates 7%FD.

5. My RC-F which is a far larger engine with exact same driving style if not harder, 75% less wear at 5,000 miles.

6. Nickel is showing, on this 3.5L, that is a valve guide metal. Not good.

7. If you're sending an aircraft UOA to Blackstone, I pray you have a parachute in your plane.

So when we read comments like, 0.5%, 2.5% FD who cares, I don't care as long as viscosity stays in grade. Ah yes, this is a typical comment I hear and it's a very bad comment. Here's why. FD creates deposits in the motor and corrodes the internals. It's not about whether your oil stays in grade, it's about your motor running efficiently. The difference between 1% FD reduction is a significant amount of $$ in fuel economy. His iron if I were guiding him would be 3ppm. for those that will argue not possible, check out my RC-F @5,000 miles post. I have a larger surface area, meaning I will always experience more wear, and I'm at 5ppm of iron for an engine that gets pushed harder and worse.

8. A good UOA with FTIR and GC is not more than $25. So it's cheaper to get a better UOA than Blackstone.

Why does Blackstone not have FTIR or GC? Because they like most, wouldn't really know what to do with the info. Polaris will tell you anything less than 3% FD is ok, why? Because they don't know how to reduce or control it. It's a tricky thing to control and handle. It took me close to a year of doing thousands of UOAs and guidance from none other than Terry Dyson to learn and understand it and that's not for UOA but rather just to learn how to control FD.

The reason they like flashpoint is because when it does show fuel it's always very bad. Meaning it's like an injector or another issue that is easy to figure. Anyone who thinks Blackstone isn't aware that flashpoint is good as useless for fuel dilution doesn't know this business. Blackstone is very intelligent when it comes to business and they want to keep people blind, they can't afford to spend as much time as they should for $28.
 
Originally Posted By: danielLD
Originally Posted By: kschachn
If you all say so. But if you look back at threads on this topic the numbers they sometimes provide aren't even close.


Kschachn, you are entirely right in questioning Blackstone's results. I find some comments really frightening but they're also not analysts, so take into perspective this is not what they do for a living. Molakule is the ONLY guy I'd bother reading on BITOG.

1. In all my testing, we debunked the myth that fuel dilution disappears on start up or after warm up. At tribologik we did close to 40 back to back tests with vehicles from V8's, I-4's, V-6s, and a V10. The most I saw was a .8-1% difference.

2. Fuel does not evaporate on start up, another myth of the industry, today's fuel chemistries force the oil to bond to the fuel.

3. His oil isn't in grade. Tribologik's supercomputer would have flagged that sample all day for fuel dilution based on viscosity measurement. And I HATE vis measurements.

4. His flash point at 380 + 6.97 @ 5,000 in my computer model approximates 7%FD.

5. My RC-F which is a far larger engine with exact same driving style if not harder, 75% less wear at 5,000 miles.

6. Nickel is showing, on this 3.5L, that is a valve guide metal. Not good.

7. If you're sending an aircraft UOA to Blackstone, I pray you have a parachute in your plane.

So when we read comments like, 0.5%, 2.5% FD who cares, I don't care as long as viscosity stays in grade. Ah yes, this is a typical comment I hear and it's a very bad comment. Here's why. FD creates deposits in the motor and corrodes the internals. It's not about whether your oil stays in grade, it's about your motor running efficiently. The difference between 1% FD reduction is a significant amount of $$ in fuel economy. His iron if I were guiding him would be 3ppm. for those that will argue not possible, check out my RC-F @5,000 miles post. I have a larger surface area, meaning I will always experience more wear, and I'm at 5ppm of iron for an engine that gets pushed harder and worse.

8. A good UOA with FTIR and GC is not more than $25. So it's cheaper to get a better UOA than Blackstone.

Why does Blackstone not have FTIR or GC? Because they like most, wouldn't really know what to do with the info. Polaris will tell you anything less than 3% FD is ok, why? Because they don't know how to reduce or control it. It's a tricky thing to control and handle. It took me close to a year of doing thousands of UOAs and guidance from none other than Terry Dyson to learn and understand it and that's not for UOA but rather just to learn how to control FD.

The reason they like flashpoint is because when it does show fuel it's always very bad. Meaning it's like an injector or another issue that is easy to figure. Anyone who thinks Blackstone isn't aware that flashpoint is good as useless for fuel dilution doesn't know this business. Blackstone is very intelligent when it comes to business and they want to keep people blind, they can't afford to spend as much time as they should for $28.


I don't disagree that there is fuel here, the real practical question is so what, and what do I do about it? There would still be fuel if I changed it fall and spring, likely just as much in the spring sample and next to none in the fall sample. Nickel is also an alloying metal used in everything else steel inside the engine from the cylinder liners to the camshaft and timing components. It's just as likely from there as the valve guides. Furthermore how do you figure that viscosity has slipped out of grade? The measured values look good to me. Your RC-F is wearing better, again so what? My mom doesn't drive your RC-F, she drives this car and at almost 70 it's there to serve her and not the other way around.
 
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