andy535xi

Hey Guys,

As you may know, I sent out my oil to get analyzed after 8,000km. The iDrive showed oil change at 16,000km. I just wanted to see if the oil still held up to its properties. Here are the results. It looks like after 8,000km the oil is still in good condition. Aluminum particles show the highest jump, but that could be due to the break in period and aluminum pistons/sleeves.

My verdict, its very safe to drive on the oil for about 12,000km.

Enjoy.

andy535xi

I don't know if you guys can see the file or not, if not, can someone post it up. If I need to resend, please let me know, and I will upload it to someone. Sorry I haven't posted anything with attachments before.

Brit_in_NJ

Don't worry it's working fine! Results look good.

mrfva

Thanks for sharing this info. Good to know

AKAlius

Another good place to check your oil is Blackstone Laboratories. They send you the kit free and you just pay for the test which is $25. Most places charge for the kit.

Geoff A

How often are you going to sample your oil? Frequent reports will allow you to build up a picture of what's going on inside, so hopefully you can react to pending failures before they happen, as you'll see a trend in particle counts. The Caterpillar guys in the UK do scheduled oil sampling and it allows them to catch bearings, pumps, etc, etc before they fail on heavy earthmoving and quarrying machinery, saving thousands on downtime and repair costs.

I'm curious - do you intend to sample the transmission and final drive? Or are you leaving those to chance....... Be interested to know your thoughts

Cheers

Geoff

andy535xi

so far, this has been my only test.
Based on what I've seen, I will perform my next oil change at 12,000km after this one. Considering that it only costs $30.00CDN to perform this test, I might (just for shits and giggles) perform it again ... just to see whats going on inside.

For other members ... it would be interesting to see how your engine is doing after "x" km. I know every lab/test is different, but see what you guys can do about performing one of these on YOUR engine. Lets get some "intelligent" info on these engines if we can.

~Andy

fitzski

Hi Andy;
For the age of the engine, the numbers are good. During this break-in period, it's very difficult to evaluate any abnormal wear conditions. Silicon seems higher than I would expect (with the UOA history on my VWs, I've never had higher than 11, and that was on a sample with twice the miles and I live on a dirt road), but it's not absurd, and may be typical for this engine.

Do you know what the factory/dealer oil is? The viscosity (reported in centistokes) is at 9.4, which is a bit short of a 30 weight - knowing what the oil was, you'd know if it was still in it's weight class - i.e. maintaining it's viscosity.

Also, you mention you had the dealer draw the sample for you - without knowing exactly how the sample was taken and if the container was new and devoid of contaminants, it can be difficult to trust the results. They may have used a glass jar they wiped out with a dirty rag, and then scooped a sample from the oil catchcan that gets used for every car that passes through - just by way of example.

If you do want to continue with a sampling regimen, I'd highly recommend picking up a sampling kit - it will include a small hand vaccuum pump (like a MityVac, if you're familiar with that), a length of clear plastic tubing, and a number of sampling bottles. Wearcheck.ca (a reputable lab) may offer their own kits, or you can source the components yourself, or you can get a kit from a CAT/Toromont dealer (which is what I do, and is the lab I use). Samples are then drawn from the dipstick tube directly into the sampling bottle. It's very easy and clean to do.

You may wish to browse the BITOG (Bob Is The Oil Guy) forums and see if anyone else is sampling from BMWs:
http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php

Good luck and congrats on doing the analysis!

Cheers,
Scott.

beaker

He has a 2008 535xi, which doesn't have a dipstick. The only way to get the sample on a car without a dipstick is to take it when the oil is changed, so a MityVac won't do him any good.

fitzski

Really?! No dipstick?! Wow... I take it that it's left *solely* to the computer then to monitor the oil level? Interesting. That must make filling a bit of a tedious guessing game. Were BMW dipsticks so notoriously prone to failure and mis-use that they saw fit to delete it?

In light of that... the preferred technique for taking a sample while draining is to catch it mid-drain, directly from the stream into the sampling bottle - no transfers. Of course... the dealer is probably using some sealed vaccum system to drain the oil...!


Sorry for the misguided information, then.