2001 Dodge 2500, 431k miles, 22k miles on RT6

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RT6 CK-4 spiked with Redline oil additive

From Polaris:
Truck Odometer: 431440 mi
Miles on oil: 22000
7 quarts of makeup oil added.
Fram Ultra filter.

Wear Metals:
(Element (ppm); 235k, 322k, 338k, 352k, 370k, 388k, 410k, 431k)
Iron; 42, 52, 30, 50, 38, 72, 45, 31
Chromium; 3, 3, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 1
Al; 4, 5, 3, 4, 3, 4, 3, 2
Cu; 3, 4, 1, 2, 1, 3, 1, 1
Lead; 9, 31, 4, 7, 2, 13, 1, 0

Contaminants:
Silicon; 6, 13, 7, 9, 7, 8, 6, 6
Sodium; 8, 6, 5, 4, 7, 9, 5, 4
Potassium; 62, 0, 1, 1, 4, 1, 2, 2

Multi-source metals:
Moly; 75, 76, 5, 4, 0, 2, 1, 0
Boron; 83, 38, 112, 69, 106, 62, 96, 130

Additive metals:
Mag; 1333, 1198, 179, 163, 94, 105, 98, 94
Calcium; 960, 1111, 2174, 2198, 2053, 2179, 2099, 2448
Phos; 1138, 1104, 1012, 1048, 924, 959, 944, 1217
Zinc; 1439, 1471, 1277, 1271, 1143, 1211, 1134, 1505

Fuel Dilution; Soot; Water;
KV100 (cSt); 15.1, 15.1, 15.3, 15.3, 15.4, 15.4, 16.2, 15.1
TBN; 6.54, 6.99, 5.69, 4.27, 4.96, 4.13, 5.6, 6.42
Oxidation; 15, 16, 14, 14, 13, 15, 14, 17
Nitration; 10, 10, 9, 9, 8, 9, 8, 9

Polaris Comments:
Data indicates no abnormal findings. Resample at normal interval. Lubricant and filter change acknowledged.


The big news on this UOA is the Iron concentration. Corrected Iron concentration on this OCI is 51 ppm due to the 7 quarts of makeup oil, yielding a wear rate of 2.3 ppm per kmile. This is a 30% decrease from the previous OCI, where the wear rate was 3.3 ppm/kmile. This was oil that I added 2/3 oz/qt of Redline Break-In oil additive when I did the last oil change. It seems to have had a marked effect. What conclusion can be drawn on the basis of one data point? None, but it does seem worth getting another bottle of Redline additive, and spiking the oil again.

Other wear metals are nearly zero.
KV100 has gone back to the same old 15.1 cSt.
Fuel dilution is same as always.
Soot has dropped back down to 0.1%
TBN was still very strong at 6.42, so the oil could have gone much longer.

Oil consumption went up on this OCI to 7 quarts in 22,000 miles. On the last, it was 6 qts for 21k. There seems to have been an upward trend over the last few intervals. At what point do I switch the engine over to dino 15w40 to save on oil cost? I'm thinking that I'll install Valvoline High Mileage Premium Blue for the summer and see how it does.
 
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The '02 I had did fine on 15W40, would easily start below zero with it-I bet you could cut your consumption a lot by using T4, Delo, Premium Blue, or Delvac 1300 !5W40 instead of the T6.
 
Originally Posted By: A_Harman

Truck Odometer: 431440 mi
Miles on oil: 22000
7 quarts of makeup oil added.
Fram Ultra filter.
At what point do I switch the engine over to dino 15w40 to save on oil cost?


Now.

I would switch to whatever 15W-40 is cheap to buy. Harvest King is only $6 a gallon.

Good oil filter - I'd keep running the Ultra or maybe a Amsoil/Donaldson.

Run it to 15,000 and pull a sample just to see what trends have changed.
 
You don't have enough data to understand the true variation of Fe prior to use of the additive, and therefore cannot make any assertion one way or another after its introduction.

Overall, good performance. Still plenty of life left in her, I suspect.

Looking forward to the switch to dino; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised on how well it does.
 
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Like dnewton says 1 datum isn’t enough but 2-4 will be strongly suggestive. I for one would like you to do exactly the same thing for several more OCIs. The mfgs may have gone just a bit too low on ZDDP at least in your particular case. I think that Redline Breakin additive is virtually the only consumer level additive worth anything.
 
Originally Posted By: m37charlie
Like dnewton says 1 datum isn’t enough but 2-4 will be strongly suggestive. I for one would like you to do exactly the same thing for several more OCIs. The mfgs may have gone just a bit too low on ZDDP at least in your particular case. I think that Redline Breakin additive is virtually the only consumer level additive worth anything.


Agreed, except I'll go with the OP's single RL additive report compared to 7 non-additive reports in the same engine, in combination with Ford's testing, as being strongly suggestive. For diesel applications, this additive is likely applicable to other CK4s as well which lowered ZDDP to the 800-1100 ppm P range.

Glad that not all drink the CK4 Kool-Aid alleging less wear with less ZDDP.
 
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Originally Posted By: dnewton3
You don't have enough data to understand the true variation of Fe prior to use of the additive, and therefore cannot make any assertion one way or another after its introduction.

Overall, good performance. Still plenty of life left in her, I suspect.

Looking forward to the switch to dino; I think you'll be pleasantly surprised on how well it does.



Here is all the data I have from UOA's back to May, 2012:

oil

The oil has always been RT6, but the SAE spec changed from CJ4 to CK4 at 338k miles.
I have color-coded OCI's in the Truck Miles row to show where samples were taken without changing the oil.
All oil analyses were done by Polaris in Indianapolis.
I calculate a Dilution Factor, and divide it into the Iron reading, getting a corrected Iron number.
The Dilution Factor is calculated by 1-((Oil Added)/(Oil Added + Initial Fill)). Initial oil fill on my truck is 11 quarts.
Then I calculate the Iron Wear Rate by dividing Corrected Iron by the Oil Sample Distance, getting a wear rate in ppm/kmile.

The resulting wear rate readings don't all make sense. The first three readings on CJ4 oil are all high, finishing up at 4.8 ppm/kmile at 211,000 miles.
The rest of the readings on CJ4 oil are all in the range of 2.4 to 2.6. Then when the switch to CK4 oil was made at 338,000 miles, the Iron wear rate increases from 2.6 to 2.9 to 3.1 to 3.8, and then down to 3.3 at 410,000 miles. So I do have 5 readings of wear on RT6 CK4 before doing the Redline experiment. In the real world, I don't think it gets much better than that. It would be expensive and time-consuming to take a sample every 5000 miles to build a stronger confidence interval based on more readings, and even then people could throw darts at the results because the duty cycle is not uniform.

I view the wear rate of 2.3 after the addition of Redline as a promising initial result. So at least 4 more readings are necessary through the rest of the year to see what the trend over time is.
 
I believe you're on the right track in your understanding! Data lives; it breathes; it's always moving a bit. We cannot look at one UOA and say what "normal" is. (We can look at one UOA and see if there's a horrific shift due to a problem, but we cannot make any general conclusions as to "better" with small sample sets).

You have a good data stream, but you don't have nearly enough data to really know true variation with any reasonable accuracy. You'd need 30 samples as a minimum for an overall view, or if you want to delineate between CJ-4 and CK-4, you'd need 30 EACH. So as you can see, you don't have nearly enough data to make a true statistically viable conclusion. You're in an anecdotal state thus far. I've said it many times; we BITOGers don't run any trial long enough, or have enough money, to really do a true micro analysis study.

I will note that you had several UOAs with Fe in the 2.x ppm range using CJ-4; but you also had some up around high 4.x to 5.x ppm. Now that you're using CK-4, you're in the 3.x range.
Your average using CJ-4 was 3.9ppm/1k miles. (I will ignore the mixed spec UOA). The average with CK-4 was lower, at 3.1ppm/1k miles. Despite what folks think about CK-4, your running average was better with CK-4, even before the RL additive. It is important to understand the variation to know the entire storyline, but the averages are still giving you info.

I can assure you that any engine running only 3.x ppm per 1k miles is NOT seeing high wear. In fact that is very good. So prior to the introduction of the RL additive, your wear was desirable, and probably very "normal", even using CK-4.

Again - I look forward to the dino runs; I think you'll find them very productive and economical. There are some older UOAs here from a member we've not seen in some time; BigGreyMegacab. He ran dino VPB for out to 20k miles, and got great wear results in his Cummins. I suspect you'll find similar results.

You have a fine running engine.
 
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