jcismo1

I Just received my first oil report and the iron content was elevated. The truck has 40544 miles on it. The oil is Rotella T 5-40 Syn., filter: Fleetgard Stratopore, oil had 10,544 mi at the change time. I tow some, about 6000# traval trailer (mainly mountain driving), so a little hard use there. Not much idling. All was good in the report, TBN was still 9.9, no fuel or antifreeze, etc.
The iron was 99 and the universal average was 23. Should I be concerned?
This is their comment:JOEL: Things look pretty good in this first sample from the Cummins 5.9L in your Ram. Universal averages
show typical wear levels for this type of engine after about 7,000 miles on the oil. You ran quite a bit longer
on the oil and iron was the only metal out of line. We can certainly blame some of it on your longer oil run,
but we also can't rule out a little excess wear at steel parts like cylinders and rotating shafts. A little hard use
like towing or idling might explain it. The TBN was 9.9 showing lots of active additive left. Due to iron, check
back in another 10,000 miles.
I have since read, that synthetic oils tend to show higher iron numbers than dino oil. Any truth to that? It has had synthetic oil since 11,500 miles.
I guess I'll just do as suggested by Blackstone, check back in another 10000 miles.

madhat

A single report really does nothing but make you worry with minute changes. The only time I'd worry about a single report is when there is something drastic going on...

Run it like normal, check back with them.

Dr.Dizzle

Like madhat mentioned,one UOA is nothing to put total faith in, or panic over. Do you change oil brands from time to time? What is possible is the chemistry changes from brand to brand can set off small spikes as the metals "normalize" to a new oil.

Heavy towing can often spike up wear metals. Not at all time to panic, but I'd say continued UOAs would be advisable.