Originally Posted by dnewton3
Overall the wear metals are settling down. The Fe avg ppm/1k miles is nice and low now; it's been coming down regardless of the lube used. At close to 2ppm/1k mi, it's about as good as you could hope for. The other metals are so low now they are just noise. The contamination is low as well.
I see you stopped getting the TBN; that's a wise choice, as it's probably not going to show any correlation to wear rates anyway. I've seen tons of data with both TBN and TAN, and historically they've not been a good predictor of impending wear in shorter OCIs. With today's sealed crankcase systems, there's just not nearly as much risk of acidic damage. The only time I would consider getting TBN/TAN counts is if you're doing greatly extended OFCIs; past 15k miles.
Are you following the IOLM? I would think you could easily get to 10k miles in an OCI.
Indeed, those are basically the comments I'm getting from Blackstone. I really could not be more pleased with my EcoBoost. 80% of my miles are highway, with some city and dirt road miles filling out the rest. I do not push the limit on hauling and I don't tow.
I completely agree about TBN. I realized with the OCIs I run, there's absolutely no point to getting that test.
I am not following the IOLM per se. I typically run it around 5-6K. The IOLM would be going off almost exactly at 10K. I still have a ways to go to build up the confidence to run that long, but I'm working on it.