My Used Oil Analysis Report

Scotty,

Thank you for sharing this.

I am running Amsoil 2000 series 0w-30 and coming up on my 10k oil change.

I just ordered a six-pack of Blackstone oil tests.

Once again,

Thanks

storm petrol

 

Had 5k miles on the oil. Everything looks good except they find sodium in the oil. Since full synthetic oil does not contain sodium. My assumption is when I bring 3 qts of Mobil 1 syn to the dealer, they added the extra 0.x qt to meet the spec (I believe spec was 3.9 qt).
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:mellow: I'm not aware of any Prius coming with Mobil1 in them, so I assume that you put it in. At how many miles did you first change?
I was going to wait until about 2500 to do my first change (Mobil1) and then again at 5000 just to get back on a 5000 mile schedule.

 

Thanks for posting the UOA, ScottY. With your permission I will make a new column on my "Prius UOA" spreadsheet. I agree that the sodium is unusual. Those "unit averages" are all Blackstone's data for Prius with Mobil synthetic (including some I did). So, an expected 8 for sodium is a real number.

My evidence that this is not in the Toyota factory fill is from Tadashi's UOA, where his 5k oil had 0 sodium. Of course this does not address the possibility that your shop topped off with...something.

Maybe we ought to nail down the antifreeze possibility. I am not certain that Blackstone knows about the Toyota coolant chemistry, or even if it is unusual. The issue has not really come up before. Would you want to email them about that?

One point against your "oil guy" for drawing a cold sample. That's what I did the first time, and also got a 1% fuel.

Everything else looks like clear sailing. Once you get used to all those 0s in the wear metals, some conventional vehicle UOAs look pretty scary.

DAS

 

As you may recall, I had a similar issue with oddly high Na levels. Then they magically went away on their own, which is impossible. The Virgin analysis of Mobil 1 0W-30 and 0W-20 were low teens for Na at most.

After chasing a lot of dead ends, the Toromont Caterpillar testing lab suggested I try to snag a virgin sample of the dealer oil. What a surprise that was, almost 400 ppm Na.

I mentioned to the Cat test lab that perhaps Toyota motors somehow require high Na levels. Their reply was censored, this *is* a family forum!

 

Scott:

Don't you hate that? They still do little things against your wishes.

Before I started changing the oil myself, I took along 3 U.S. quarts of Mobil 1 0W-30 to my dealer, and told him *not* to top it off. They were a bit concerned the oil would be too low, but after checking were very surprised to see the oil level halfway between the dots.

At that level, they had no issues with calling it Good and handing me the fob. I drove it that way for 8,200 km and the oil level stayed the same too.

The next time I changed the oil, I put in 3 litres of Mobil 1 0W-20. That put the level about 2/3 up from the Add dot. It took about 350ml to touch the Full dot.

The oil level is now slightly below the Full dot. To ensure I didn't have a motor problem, I did a sample - which needs 120 ml of used oil - at 4,000km. Everything was perfect and Na had dropped again.

Oh, I also contacted Toyota Canada and asked why they insisted on using a bulk oil with high Na, traces of sulfur, moisture, Fe, etc, to service customer cars, and passed along my concerns about the Na readings in my used oil analysis.

Two months later, no reply ....

jay

 

I have a jug of Genuine Toyota Coolant at the hobby farm, "just in case." I called Toromont Cat and they said they could also analyze the coolant too. I'll pick up a sample bottle at the Cat shop - which is near the airport - and next time at the hobby farm I'll get a sample.

Wouldn't the Toyota coolant be an organic acid with no silicates? All HD diesel motors require non-silicated coolant due to erosion issues with cylinder liners and o-rings at the cylinder liners. Regular "green stuff" coolant has silicates, which are actually abrasive. They're also bad for aluminum heads and all-AL motors.

Otherwise I'm no longer going to pursue the Na issue. As it keeps dropping, it's fairly obvious the nasty mystery bulk oil from the dealer was the culprit, especially considering the approx 400 ppm virign Na reading.

 

Always been curious about this - where would one go to get a used-oil analysis done? I figure it must be reasonably cheap, or people wouldn't do it as frequently as they seem to. I've always wanted to do it on the oil from my truck, but never really looked into where to do it, or how much it would cost. Any suggestions?