Just as the title says, any idea why. There was 150 hours on the esso 0w40, 2750 hours on the truck. About 500 hours on a new bottom end, (crank, bearings, etc) at the same time I had a pdr cam installed. Is all that iron from the break in of the bottom end or is that cam wearing fast, or? All other levels where "normal" at

Silicon 6
sodium 0
potassium 4
iron 59
chrome 1
lead 0
copper 2
tin 0
aluminum 0
nickel 2
silver 1
titanium1
boron 2
phos 1310
zinc 1490
calcium 3680
barium 0
magnesium 7
moly 3
antimony 0
lithium 0
beryllium 0

Visc @ 40C = 88.7
Visc @100C = 16.26
soot 0.75%

 

should this be in the 3rd gen drivetrain section

 

best would probably call PDR or another experienced high performance shop.

 

Wear on the bottom end would not show that... the cam would. Bearings are not iron. Looking at the level of calcium and phos. I would say you could go longer between changes. Recommend a bypass oil system to filter out some of that... Iron will also show up as cylinders wear too. I'm thinking cam though... is that a reground cam? Only a couple of folks (like F1) give a brand new top shelf cam material.

 

yes its a pdr reground cam, they have sold "new" core cams, but were out of them when I needed one. I think Jsteiger and jeff k have pdr cams also, I wonder if they have had any iron/wear problems. or anyone with a f1 cam? This is my first uoa, Ill do a few more, see if anything changes.

Also if I add heavier valve springs, Im guessing the cam wear/iron level would go up also? or im i wrong

 

According to Blackstone, Universal averages on Iron are 23.

 

How many miles on the oil ?

 

Well I mentioned the reground cam only because they do have a tendency to do what you are experiencing. Don't panic though.

Still, if it were me, I would install an oil bypass system quickly to help filter out the iron that is letting go... and switch to an oil very high in moly like Schaeffers. This helps to smooth out the rough spots and keep from grinding that cam away. My .02

 

Don't worry till the next oil change analysis. If iron is high again, then you might worry/ try different lube.

How long do you plan to have that truck? It's gonna last another 100K regardless of what that oil analysis says. If your the type to keep it for 500K, you might start thinking about potential problems.

Who knows if it is the cam, it could just as likely be the cylinders or the valve train.

 

I had 95ppm iron on my first sample on my 6.7L truck and 58ppm on the second sample. My 2003 had 32ppm iron on the last sample. My PDR cam was not a regrind, but a new cam ground from a blank.

I really don't think you have anything to worry about. Take another sample after a few thousand km's and see what it says. Get yourself an amsoil bypass filter (I have one on both my trucks) and it will help keep your oil cleaner.

 

Might be cam brake in. Do you use a lot of HP as in running hard or pulling.
I can tell from oil analysis when have pulled hard as in very heavy tow.

 

Jordon-

Rather than answer your PM, I figure I'll answer on this thread.

My situation is as follows:

-I have a PDR cam, but it is not a regrind. I got it back when they first started developing them for the 3rd gens. I distinctly remember hounding Piers for it and he kept on telling and emailing me, "the blanks are showing up soon!". In fact, I was actually surprised to read in an article in a diesel rag about a guy installing a PDR cam recently and the article stated that it was a regrind. Maybe that happened after Piers left PDR?
-Anyhow, I have done a total of 8 oil analyses on my truck. The iron ranged from 16-33 ppm. The highest Fe were oil changes before and right after the cam swap. My latest Fe in November 2007 was 23 ppm. Since the cam change my Fe has consistently ranged in the 23-28 ppm area.
-I do oil changes every 7000-8500 miles using Delo. The analyses (CAT lab) show I can run longer, but because of my fueling levels (soot in oil) I choose to stick with this because it's an easy number to remember.

Like others have indicated, I would wait until you get another analysis with the same amount of miles on it as this one before you start to get too worried. Yes, that's hard to do and I identify with this!

Another thing... do you know what the background Fe is on virgin Esso oil? Did the oil come out of jugs or a drum? Sometimes when a vehicle is in a shop they use bulk oil and maybe that could have got contaminated in a shop environment. Just throwing out ideas...

-Hope this helps-

 

I could be wrong but I don't believe any bypass filtration is going to clean up his iron. We're dealing with parts per million not specs of iron flake here.

 

dfranks-there was 150 hours, only 5000km, (3000 miles), on this oil change, there was alot of slow speed driving, lots of fast idle time, (pipelining) etc. I always change oil at 200 hours or less.

soulezoo-i planned on, changing to the john deere plus-50 oil (15w40 and 0w40), since its staying as a C1-4+, and has a moly level of 89, according to the tdr "CI-4/cj-4 oil analysis" write up, which is less then valvoline premium blue classic 15w40 at 112, but more then the valvoline premium blue extreme 5w40 at 86, I dont know what schaffers is at

big blue24- I plan on keeping until the 400k mile mark, by that time the engine should be around 12 000 hours. So I would like to get this iron level figured out within thee next half year

jeff-Ill look into the amsoil filter

dozer- for daily driving, its on level 5 on the smarty, so Im guessing that is just under 400 hp with the other toys that are on the truck. The truck weighs 15 000lbs, all the time, (jeff k seen it) so its always "working" but with the combo of the twins/ cam its very hard to get the pyro over 1100F, i dont know if that would have any effect on wear levels

jstieger- according to my uoa sheet, new esso 0w40 has a iron level of 1 ppm, oil was directly out of 4L jugs

 

BlueDually,

I don't know what the base is on Schaeffers 9000 (what I use) but my last UOA was at 20k oil change and the moly was 221. FWIW... zinc was 2119, phos. 1580, mag. 202, cal. 3931, TBN 3.1, iron was 25. Again, that was all at 20,000 oil change.