Oil Analysis

I'm curious how many here do used oil analysis. My best guess is that most don't simply because a Used Oil Analysis (UOA) at $32 is about the same price as a full synthetic change on a Miata. I ran my first one on my last oil change in the 750 and posted it at BITOG forums and got lots of comment. BITOG thread Anyone else doing oil analysis? Thoughts on mine?

I will be doing an oil analysis on one of my cars soon. It depends on when the oil analysis kit arrives, since the MS3 is coming up on its next oil change soon.

My kit took about a week to show up from Blackstone. In the meanwhile I held the sample in a carefully washed and dried small juice bottle, with no ill effects.

I get them through Blackstone labs myself.

pigeon wrote: I'm curious how many here do used oil analysis. My best guess is that most don't simply because a Used Oil Analysis (UOA) at $32 is about the same price as a full synthetic change on a Miata.

I get mine done by Blackstone as well. And it's well under $32. $22.50 for one. I buy six packs @ $19 each. Actually I prepay the postage on them too, so that I can just drop them in the mail box. So that adds a bit to the order price (but it's money I'd spend shipping it anyhow).

I check most cars once a year, unless I'm looking for something specific. Did the mazdapseed3 everytime for a while when new. It was neat to have a window into the break in process.

Bonus: When I sent a test in with coolant contamination they called me as soon as they had results to warn me. It actually was a test post head gasket to see if I needed to do another change or not to get more coolant out, so the call was unnecessary, but if it had been from something where I was getting coolant into the oil, I'd sure have appreciated the extra heads up.

I paid for the TBN test which added the extra $10. All the wear metals were fine, but the TBN was 0.1, which really freaked out the guys over on BITOG. It seems they'd never seen one that low. I guess my oil was all used up and then some; based on this analysis I'm shortening my change interval from the computer-based ~15k to 10k.

I've been using Blackstone for a few years now. They're pretty good to deal with.

Here's mine, honda's older engines are amazingly easy on oil: