Originally Posted by JamieC

Top data guys.
Well done.

Originally Posted by redrocker55

Well guys...the results are in.

First off...I'd like to put out a huge THANK YOU to essfour who supplied the B8 S4 with 10,000 miles on a oil change using dealership supplied oil...in this case it was Castrol Syntec 5w40.

His car has always had the oil changed following the Audi scheduled maintenance program. Approx. 5,000 miles. Then again at Approx. 15,000 miles. This oil change was done with 10,300 miles on the oil and 24,000 miles on the 3.0 TFSI. This was the first analysis of his vehicle I am supplying a copy of my oil changes as a baseline. I have had each one analyzed since I bought the S4 new 53,000 miles ago. The same lab has done the analysis to eliminate a large area of discrepancy. I will add that the lab did not know the previous oil change history of his car. After 2 oil changes most of the manufacturing debris should be flushed out of the engine and captured by the oil filters. Although silicon can also be an indicator of a leaky air intake after the air filter. Most likely not the case...but worth considering.

So here we go. First up is the vehicle following the Audi recommended oil change interval using the dealership oil. Second analysis is my car following a different oil change interval, my oil change interval, and using different oil. I'm not trying to sell oil...I don't sell oil. I'm in the financial services industry. But if you want to know what kind of oil I've been using (I've been playing around with a couple the past couple oil changes) I'm more than willing to talk about it or you can read my previous posts.

Since I have 53,000 miles on my car I pulled a earlier analysis that was done at the closest mileage interval I could find (in total miles) to the comparison vehicle. I have a earlier one but I thought I would show the closest one I had that had with slightly more miles so that my analysis is after more total miles than the comparison car so that nobody could say "well your car has less miles so it should show less wear".

So here is how I see it. We are mostly concerned about the core wear metals...

Aluminum is 12 compared to mine at 4
Iron is 57 compared to mine at 15
Copper is 10 compared to mine at 4
Lead is 6 compared to mine at 0
Tin for yours is 0 compared to mine at 4

Iron, Aluminum and Copper are showing out of range for the 10K interval engine on the report (top report/ highlighted in bold). Wear rates do not follow a straight line or said another way, they are not linear to mileage. Meaning the universal average for this engine for Aluminum is 3 for about 5,000 miles. Linear would mean that at that wear rate you would drive 20,000 miles to get to a 12. But this engine got to 12 in about 10,000 miles. The wear metals will show up more and at an accelerated rate as more and more miles accumulate on a oil. This higher wear rate shouldn't freak anyone out. But since this test proved they are out of range we have our first evidence, that I was suspecting, that there is good reason to use a better quality oil in this engine. The Castrol Syntec 5w40 is probably a good oil to use for shorter intervals...the TBN held up very well. But it is not as good as other oils in protecting against wear metals and now we have some decent evidence to prove it. This experiment is not perfectly scientific. Unless a lab is used with 2 cars at the same time to accumulate the miles at the same time then no oil analysis is perfect. But the numbers are far enough out of line to suggest that this information is worth considering.

If we use wear rates of one of the more important wear metals, Iron, then my car is accumulating the same amount of wear every 25,000 miles compared to the other vehicle accumulating that wear over 10,000 miles.

Thanks again to essfour for the help in making this analysis happen! He provided us a great contribution to our forum (at least to those of us who are picky about oils!). []