Mobil 1 EP 5w-30 @ 13k mi; GM 5.3L 238k mi

I understand what your saying and it makes sense.

I was simply asking about the bypass filters for future reference, thanks for helping out with that.

I am fairly convinced that the lead is coming from the cooler. I say that because if there were that much lead coming from a bearing it should be making a decent amount of noise I would think.

I will have to do some thinking on what the best way to bypass the oil cooler is, as I mentioned earlier it has very stiff hydraulic lines going to all of it so it not like I can just reroute it.

I might have to completely bypass the whole system and just screw a regular filter onto it, which again is easier said than done.
 
Originally Posted by Kbuskill
Good info.

I haven't researched oil filters in a while but I remember that Fram used to be garbage (cardboard end caps, etc.). Mobil 1 says their extended performance filters have a "synthetic blend" filter media.

Last time I checked the K&N, Mobil1 EP, and Wix gold were some of the better filters... as far as build quality was concerned (metal end caps, more pleats, better media).

But I'm willing to learn.

As far as running the bypass filter is concerned. How would I know when to change it?

I know the safe bet would be every oil change but would I be throwing away a half used oil filter at that point?

I know that is a hypothetical question and there is no good answer. I'm just looking for a generalization.

Aside from touching the filter after the engine is up to operating temperature... I'm assuming if the filter was plugged oil wouldn't be flowing through it... and seeing if it was cool to the touch, I wouldn't know how to check it.



You are fine. The person giving you advise it not wrong nor is his heart in the wrong place but worrying about micron efficiency less that 5% in a double bypass set up gains nothing.
 
Here is a Wix link with their various bypass filter elements, etc. .LINK

Correct me if I'm wrong. Ken, your GM LS engine, like mine, has a separate oil cooler circuit and pad on the block. My understanding is you are NOT utilizing the oil cooler circuit/pad for your cheap and probably restrictive oil cooler. You are utilizing the oil filtration circuit, and have an adapter where the stock oil filter would normally go. From this adapter, an oil line goes to the remote dual full flow filter mount inlet, then out of it and thru the cheap oil cooler, then back to the adapter and into the engine.

If this is the case?, I believe you may be starving your engine of oil "volume" and thus slowly killing the bearings etc. It's not bad enough yet to hear a knock. I hope I'm wrong.

I recommend you put everything back to stock, change the oil and filter, drive it for a couple hundred miles just to flush out the current load, change the oil and filter with what you have been using, and after 5000 miles send in a sample for analysis.

Or not
 
You are correct that I am not currently using the factory oil cooler connection above the factory oil filter location. It is indeed currently blocked off. It does in fact run from the adapter at the factory oil filter location out to the remote mount filters and then through the cooler and back to the adapter at the engine.

To give a little back story on how this all got started...

I had a small intermittent ticking on the drivers side of the engine which I attributed to lifter ticking. It would sometimes occur immediately after start up and tick for a few seconds and then stop. It also sometimes would start ticking after sitting and idling for 20+ minutes and after driving again it would go away.

I decided that I would replace the oil pump and O-ring on the pickup tube, along with a new timing chain while I was that far in. I installed a Mellings HV/HP pump. My 5.3L is an LMG (flex fuel) engine which came from the factory with a HV oil pump. I decided since the truck had 185k miles at the time that a little bit extra oil pressure wasn't a bad thing so I installed the HV/HP pump which was supposed to increase pressure by 10%.

After getting everything put back together all was well, no more lifter ticking BUT after driving it for a few days I got a check engine light... pulled the code and it was oil pressure sensor out of range. Ok no big deal. Pulled the old switch and screen and installed new. Drove a little bit same issue.

Now mind you prior to me installing the new oil pump my oil pressure would be 45-50 on a cold start and 20-25 hot idle.

After the new oil pump I would see 70-75 cold start and 60-65 hot idle.

Needless to say, the ECM didn't like seeing the oil pressure that high because it didn't fall into what it was programmed to see as "normal range".

In an attempt to lower the oil pressure enough to make the ECM happy I installed this dual filter setup and the oil cooler using the factory oil filter location, ON PURPOSE, to try and lower the pressure a bit by introducing some restrictions into the system.

While it did lower the pressure a little bit, it still was not enough. I contacted Black Bear Performance to see if they could adjust the parameters in the ECM for the oil pressure range... they could not.

I ended up buying a 2' long oil pressure sensor pigtail extension and installing a resistor inline on it and plugging that inline between the oil pressure sensor and the trucks wiring harness to "lower" the oil pressure that the ECM and gauge "see". This does not make the oil pressure gauge non functional, it still functions just as it always has, it just reads about 15 PSI lower than the actual oil pressure. The ECM is happy and I don't have a check engine light which would keep me from remote starting the truck, which I use all the time because I am a big proponent of warming up a vehicle before driving it.

So I SERIOUSLY doubt that it is causing a problem with LOW oil pressure.

The cooler I am running has 1/2" NPT fittings. This is a picture of the cooler I have.

rps20191211_173547_337.jpg
 
Strange / interesting situation seeing wear skyrocket like that outta the blue.

My gears are turning, wondering what the results would be without the additional filtration but using the factory spin on.

If the dual filters are removing more metal from the oil... isn't the actual wear technically MUCH higher then indicated in the UOA?

That points to a source producing a ridiculous amount of Lead or the bearings are indeed wearing down and although you might not notice any knocking yet... it will come eventually.

I'm torn between suggesting you experiment and find the root cause of the spiked metals OR... leave everything as is and see what happens as you rack up more miles.

Wouldn't be surprised if it keeps going for many many years without any problem or... she blows up on you once the bearings call it quits.

Either way... I'm in for updates.

35.gif
 
Did you add a leaded fuel additive to your tank? (scraping for ideas)

It can sometimes not even be engine related. I've seen very high lead (>400 ppm) and copper (>100 ppm) wear in UOA that turned out to be due to excessive charge pressure in the transmission. The guy increased the charge pressure to tighten up the torque converter (a common "trick") but that high pressure was pounding on the flexplate and crankshaft causing the crank to want to walk around in the bores, eating at the sides of the bearings.
 
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Originally Posted by Artem
Strange / interesting situation seeing wear skyrocket like that outta the blue.

My gears are turning, wondering what the results would be without the additional filtration but using the factory spin on.

If the dual filters are removing more metal from the oil... isn't the actual wear technically MUCH higher then indicated in the UOA?

That points to a source producing a ridiculous amount of Lead or the bearings are indeed wearing down and although you might not notice any knocking yet... it will come eventually.

I'm torn between suggesting you experiment and find the root cause of the spiked metals OR... leave everything as is and see what happens as you rack up more miles.

Wouldn't be surprised if it keeps going for many many years without any problem or... she blows up on you once the bearings call it quits.

Either way... I'm in for updates.

35.gif



I wish I had done a UOA before adding the aftermarket stuff so that I had a good baseline to go off of... unfortunately I never did one... I guess only time will tell... it's a lot of aggravation to go to the trouble of disconnecting all the hoses and adapters and stuff to go back to a stock oil filter.

I will be sure and post the results from the 6k mile sample I just sent off. If the PO does their job correctly Blackstone should have the sample in hand today.
 
Originally Posted by Artem
If the dual filters are removing more metal from the oil... isn't the actual wear technically MUCH higher then indicated in the UOA?

The metals showing up in the UOA are not causing wear but they may be the result of it. An ICP cannot generally measure wear-causing particles without additional processing such as an acid digestion. Without a filter washing and digestion no one knows how much damage producing material there was or may be in the oil.

What is showing up in the UOA may not even be a result of wear, it could be corrosion or leaching or any other chemical process. It may not have any affect or correlation to mechanical wear whatsoever.
 
Originally Posted by RDY4WAR
Did you add a leaded fuel additive to your tank? (scraping for ideas)

It can sometimes not even be engine related. I've seen very high lead (>400 ppm) and copper (>100 ppm) wear in UOA that turned out to be due to excessive charge pressure in the transmission. The guy increased the charge pressure to tighten up the torque converter (a common "trick") but that high pressure was pounding on the flexplate and crankshaft causing the crank to want to walk around in the bores, eating at the sides of the bearings.


No I haven't added a leaded fuel additive, that I am aware of.

The only fuel additives I have used in the past are the Techron injector cleaner with PEA and the Lucas fuel injector cleaner.

Granted, when I use the injector cleaner I heavily overdose it. Like a half gallon to a quarter tank of fuel, Suburban tank is 31 gallons BTW, so roughly a half gallon to 7-8 gallons.

Not sure if that would affect it or not.
 
Originally Posted by Kbuskill
Originally Posted by RDY4WAR
Did you add a leaded fuel additive to your tank? (scraping for ideas)

It can sometimes not even be engine related. I've seen very high lead (>400 ppm) and copper (>100 ppm) wear in UOA that turned out to be due to excessive charge pressure in the transmission. The guy increased the charge pressure to tighten up the torque converter (a common "trick") but that high pressure was pounding on the flexplate and crankshaft causing the crank to want to walk around in the bores, eating at the sides of the bearings.


No I haven't added a leaded fuel additive, that I am aware of.

The only fuel additives I have used in the past are the Techron injector cleaner with PEA and the Lucas fuel injector cleaner.

Granted, when I use the injector cleaner I heavily overdose it. Like a half gallon to a quarter tank of fuel, Suburban tank is 31 gallons BTW, so roughly a half gallon to 7-8 gallons.

Not sure if that would affect it or not.



Yes non PEA based fuel system cleaners has shown to cause an uptick in lead readings in UOA's. This is one of the reasons why Terry Dyson back in the day recommended using Valvoline fuel system cleaner because it did not cause an increase in lead in UOA's.
 
Good to know. I don't use injector cleaner all the time but I do from time to time... I guess we will see what happens with this latest sample if the PO can ever manage to get it there.
 
Originally Posted by dave1251
If you use Techron or Regane both should cause a minimal uptick if any uptick at all.



Sounds like nonsense to me. I've used Techron before and still got zeros on my UOA. I don't buy it, sorry.
 
Originally Posted by Artem
Originally Posted by dave1251
If you use Techron or Regane both should cause a minimal uptick if any uptick at all.



Sounds like nonsense to me. I've used Techron before and still got zeros on my UOA. I don't buy it, sorry.



Take a deep breath and read my post again. It will show the fallacy in your nonsense post.
 
I was waiting for dnewton3 to share his knowledge.

I'll say: "Much improved. I'm sure your relived. Lead is still high? Why did it use a qt of oil? burning it or leaking it? If it was mine I wouldn't go much longer than what you did because the TBN was below 3. Everything else looked ok this time."

Time will tell the tell
 
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I have the updated valve cover that moved the intake location for the PCV inside the valve cover... I just haven't put it on yet... hopefully that will alleviate most of the oil consumption.

Blackstone says TBN above 1 is acceptable.

Judging by my previous samples the TBN was still 2.6 and 3.0 respectively at 13k miles so I don't think it is an issue.
 
When and if you stop adding make-up oil the TBN# will go down.

Twice over the past 11 yrs I've sent the same sample to both OAI and Blackstone labs. Both times the results from both labs were nearly identical. But the comments from each lab differed greatly. IMO, OAI/Polaris Lab is more conservative and their comments are more useful than Blackstone. OAI starts flagging TBN when it gets below 3.0. OAI also provides nitration and oxidation #s, Blackstone doesn't.

Here is the thread for 2 UOA on my 07 GM 6.2L: GM 6.2L LINK

and here is the thread for 11 UOA on my 07 Toy 4.0L: Toy 4.0L LINK
 
I could have missed this. Sorry if already discussed. A 2008 5.3 has AFM. That system is prone to malfunction, the lifters wear themselves out grinding on the cam lobes. There can also be low oil pressure issues due to another common problem, the oil pickup tube oring fails. Oil flow is an issue with these engines. I would not use any type of filtration that restricts flow. The updated valve cover will hopefully help with oil consumption through cyl #7. But sometimes it's too late, rings are stuck and a soak helps
 
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