Oil analysis

[hoot777]

I have a 1968 m20 G.  I have done two test with Blackstons Labs and higher than normal silicone ,chrome and aluminum. Any thoughts or experiences out there ?  Thanks. It’s running great 

[Bob - S50]

You might try giving them a call to see what the experts say.  With that said...

According to the info from our analysis sheet silicone is mostly from dirty air.  Make sure your air filter fits properly and is clean.  Also, make sure your ram air intake is properly sealed when closed.  Chrome is mostly from the rings and aluminum is most likely from the piston area although it could also be the case.  Since both metals are in the piston area so I might think something along the lines of a broken ring or landing.  You might try having your mechanic borescope the engine to see if they see any wear that might indicate that.

[carusoam]

Probably silicon, not silicone...

Silicon is a dust/dirt issue... better filtration might be an answer to that challenge... holes in ducts have been known to occur...

Silicone could be an oil, grease, seal, or sealant...

The little e makes a big difference in your plan of attack... 

See if you can confirm what the report says.

Pp thoughts only... not a chemist.

Best regards,

-a-

[jaylw314]

25 minutes ago, carusoam said:

Probably silicon, not silicone...

Silicon is a dust/dirt issue... better filtration might be an answer to that challenge... holes in ducts have been known to occur...

Silicone could be an oil, grease, seal, or sealant...

Silicone is also the stuff they put in breast implants   

In truth, though, silicone lubricants do have silicon as an ingredient, so if somebody got silicone lubricant or sealant in your oil, it might show up.  I don't know how Blackstone's particular assay works.

[Prior owner]

Agreed, sounds like an induction problem/ ram air not fully closed.

Also,  If you are using silica/ glass bead blast media to clean your plugs (a big no-no), that will also leave deposits. Probably an induction issue though.

 

Silica in spark plugs:

 How to ruin a spark plug

Edited February 5, 2019 by PilotCoyote

[Bryan]

Doesn't Blackstone give you a summary of their findings in the report?  I am not just talking about the levels, but more of a descriptive narrative of what could be happening?

[Jim Peace]

I have used Blackstone for the last 20 or so oil changes.  I had the elevated readings like yours.  I changed the air filter and my numbers came way way down....

I have the K&N like most of us do.  Here is the deal.  To care for these filters you are supposed to use a special solution to soak it and just rinse it off with low pressure water as to not damage the screen or paper elements in there.  What you will find in most shops is that it is the norm for the ignorant and lazy mechanic to use very high compressed air to clean it.  This will weaken and eventually remove the paper and damage the screen.  There will be nothing left for the new oil to adhere to.  then you get a whole bunch of muck in your box and the engine etc.  I was able to see freely through my filter and it was passing annuals.

Try a new filter and you be the one to clean it and re-wet it....then tell us your numbers in about 25-30 hours of use.....

I think I bought mine from knots to you and all the cleaning solutions and the oil to re wet it.....

This is one job you want to do yourself....

 

The difference between the old and the new is like night and day

 

Does your air filter look like this?

 

 

 

[DXB]

High silicon worries can come from a newbie owner enthusiastically applying excessive Dow Corning silicone grease to the oil filter gasket when changing the oil. Such an owner might also religiously send off oil analysis and pointlessly obsess over the reports.  Ask me how I know.   This silicon source is harmless.  As others note, silicon might also come from an induction system leak somewhere and cause other wear metals to spike.  Chrome from rings, Fe from cylinder walls, and Al from piston pin plugs would be a typical pattern. Having chrome cylinders can change the pattern.  That accordion bellows thingie between the carb heat box and the filter also likes to disintegrate and let in outside air.  It is also super hard to inspect fully without dropping the bottom cowl on the C.  FWIW Donaldson filters provide almost as much manifold pressure increase as K&Ns but are as effective at filtering as the Brackett filters. They are also super low maintenance - blow it out at annual, toss it after 500 hours.

BTW I have now exorcised my inner oil analysis demons entirely by never sending off oil for analysis any more.  

Edited February 7, 2019 by DXB

[jaylw314]

1 hour ago, Jim Peace said:

I have the K&N like most of us do.

I guess I was always under the impression the number of people using the Challenger/K&N filters was pretty small.  I know my IA was caught off guard the first time, and had to send someone down to the local Autozone to get a recharging kit.

When I first got the plane, the filter was pretty much white, so I cleaned it myself, but now they do it at annual and it should only be done then (or on condition).  FWIW, The ICA specifies you're supposed to dispose of the filter after 25 cleanings.

[Prior owner]

19 hours ago, jaylw314 said:

, The ICA specifies you're supposed to dispose of the filter after 25 cleanings.

Yep, every time you service it you gotta make a logbook entry stating how many cleanings are left..

Edited February 7, 2019 by PilotCoyote

[mooniac15u]

On 2/5/2019 at 10:32 AM, jaylw314 said:

Silicone is also the stuff they put in breast implants   

In truth, though, silicone lubricants do have silicon as an ingredient, so if somebody got silicone lubricant or sealant in your oil, it might show up.  I don't know how Blackstone's particular assay works.

The oil analysis provided by labs like Blackstone is primarily elemental analysis.  It cannot distinguish between the various possible sources of Silicon.  Silicone is a polysiloxane where the other non-hydrogen elements are generally Carbon and Oxygen.  Oxygen is not detectable in this kind of analysis and Carbon will be abundant from combustion residues.  So, the only thing detectable from a polysiloxane is the Silicon.

FWIW, silicone is a generic term describing a whole family of polysiloxanes.  Implants have an external shell made of some kind of polysiloxane but the gel inside is mostly silica.  Neither of these are likely to be structurally very similar to silicone grease.

[Marauder]

The oil analysis provided by labs like Blackstone is primarily elemental analysis.  It cannot distinguish between the various possible sources of Silicon.  Silicone is a polysiloxane where the other non-hydrogen elements are generally Carbon and Oxygen.  Oxygen is not detectable in this kind of analysis and Carbon will be abundant from combustion residues.  So, the only thing detectable from a polysiloxane is the Silicon.
FWIW, silicone is a generic term describing a whole family of polysiloxanes.  Implants have an external shell made of some kind of polysiloxane but the gel inside is mostly silica.  Neither of these are likely to be structurally very similar to silicone grease.

I love it when someone talks chemistry.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk Pro

[neilpilot]

20 minutes ago, mooniac15u said:

silicone is a generic term describing a whole family of polysiloxanes.  Implants have an external shell made of some kind of polysiloxane but the gel inside is mostly silica. 

Lets talk chemistry again.  Silica (also know as silicon dioxide) and silicone are very different substances. I doubt a polysiloxane gel will contain any silicon.  It would contain silicone..

When your oil analysis shows high levels of silicon, that often points to a poorly seated air filer or a filter bypass that's either not sealing closed or used too close to the ground.  I seriously doubt that an oil analysis would even look for silicone.

[mooniac15u]

43 minutes ago, neilpilot said:

Lets talk chemistry again.  Silica (also know as silicon dioxide) and silicone are very different substances. I doubt a polysiloxane gel will contain any silicon.  It would contain silicone..

When your oil analysis shows high levels of silicon, that often points to a poorly seated air filer or a filter bypass that's either not sealing closed or used too close to the ground.  I seriously doubt that an oil analysis would even look for silicone.

Silicone is a generic term for polysiloxanes which absolutely contain Silicon.  It is one of the core elements in the polymeric chain:

(-O-Si-O-Si-O-Si-O-SI-)

The various polysiloxanes have organic substituents attached to the Silicon atoms.  Varying the structure of the organic substituents influences the properties of the particular polysiloxane.

Neither silicon dioxide nor polysiloxanes contain Silicon in its pure elemental form but both contain a high quantity of Silicon.  In an elemental analysis it is not possible to distinguish the source of the Silicon.

[mooniac15u]

50 minutes ago, neilpilot said:

Lets talk chemistry again.  Silica (also know as silicon dioxide) and silicone are very different substances. I doubt a polysiloxane gel will contain any silicon.  It would contain silicone..

When your oil analysis shows high levels of silicon, that often points to a poorly seated air filer or a filter bypass that's either not sealing closed or used too close to the ground.  I seriously doubt that an oil analysis would even look for silicone.

Here's some information from Blackstone about the various sources of Silicon in their reports which includes silcone:

https://www.blackstone-labs.com/the-silicon-bugaboo/

And here's their write-up on the ICP elemental analysis process that might help you better understand why both silicone and silicon dioxide would show up as Silicon in the analysis report:

https://www.blackstone-labs.com/spectrometry-the-marvel-of-the-lab/

[jaylw314]

2 hours ago, mooniac15u said:

Here's some information from Blackstone about the various sources of Silicon in their reports which includes silcone:

https://www.blackstone-labs.com/the-silicon-bugaboo/

And here's their write-up on the ICP elemental analysis process that might help you better understand why both silicone and silicon dioxide would show up as Silicon in the analysis report:

https://www.blackstone-labs.com/spectrometry-the-marvel-of-the-lab/

Ah.  That's the part I wasn't sure of.  I assumed they either used some kind of chemistry to break down specific silicon products, or measured the amounts of specific known silicon products.  I guess plasmifying (not a word, but sounds cool) throws that all out the window and they're actually measuring elemental (or plasmified) silicon.  Cool!

[mooniac15u]

When compounds are exposed to a super-heated plasma some of the thermal energy is absorbed by the atoms through the movement of electrons to higher energy orbitals. At that point the atom is in what we call an “excited state.” As the electrons return to their normal energy states the energy is emitted as photons. Since electron orbitals exist at discrete energy levels the resulting photons have energy characteristic of the specific transition. Different elements have different characteristic transitions and associated proton wavelengths. By observing the light (photons) emitted by the sample you can tell which elements are present. Measuring the intensity of the emissions tells you the relative abundance of the different elements.

Using this type of analysis allows a good quantitative measure of the elemental composition. Most chemical methods tend to be more qualitative.

tl:dr, heat in – light out. Measure the light to see what you have.

[DonMuncy]

1 hour ago, mooniac15u said:

When compounds are exposed to a super-heated plasma some of the thermal energy is absorbed by the atoms through the movement of electrons to higher energy orbitals. At that point the atom is in what we call an “excited state.” As the electrons return to their normal energy states the energy is emitted as photons. Since electron orbitals exist at discrete energy levels the resulting photons have energy characteristic of the specific transition. Different elements have different characteristic transitions and associated proton wavelengths. By observing the light (photons) emitted by the sample you can tell which elements are present. Measuring the intensity of the emissions tells you the relative abundance of the different elements.

 

Using this type of analysis allows a good quantitative measure of the elemental composition. Most chemical methods tend to be more qualitative.

 

 

tl:dr, heat in – light out. Measure the light to see what you have.

 

That is exactly what I was going to say.  

[EricJ]

BTW, that's also how LEDs work:   electrons are bumped up to valence orbits by applied voltage, and the materials used have energy gaps that produce photons in the visible light range when the electrons pop back down to a lower orbit.   Red LEDs are easy to make, so are green, then yellow got figured out.   White LEDs are very tricky because you need enough light from all the visible frequencies to make it white, which a single material can't do.   There are all kinds of crazy tricks that are done to achieve this, but it's why good white LEDs haven't been around for all that long and are still being improved.

 

Edited February 8, 2019 by EricJ

[jaylw314]

39 minutes ago, EricJ said:

BTW, that's also how LEDs work:   electrons are bumped up to valence orbits by applied voltage, and the materials used have energy gaps that produce photons in the visible light range when the electrons pop back down to a lower orbit.   Red LEDs are easy to make, so are green, then yellow got figured out.   White LEDs are very tricky because you need enough light from all the visible frequencies to make it white, which a single material can't do.   There are all kinds of crazy tricks that are done to achieve this, but it's why good white LEDs haven't been around for all that long and are still being improved.

 

IIRC it was finding a blue LED that gave everyone fits

[ilovecornfields]

2 hours ago, EricJ said:

BTW, that's also how LEDs work:   electrons are bumped up to valence orbits by applied voltage, and the materials used have energy gaps that produce photons in the visible light range when the electrons pop back down to a lower orbit.   Red LEDs are easy to make, so are green, then yellow got figured out.   White LEDs are very tricky because you need enough light from all the visible frequencies to make it white, which a single material can't do.   There are all kinds of crazy tricks that are done to achieve this, but it's why good white LEDs haven't been around for all that long and are still being improved.

 

I remember when I was a 3rd year chemistry major in college and I finally “understood” why metals were shiny. It was pretty cool, but also pretty disappointing that it really took me that long to “get it.” As you get older you finally understand that phrase “he’s forgotten more than you’ll ever know.”

[Hank]

2 hours ago, jaylw314 said:

IIRC it was finding a blue LED that gave everyone fits

I thought blue fluorescent lights were hard to make . . . .

On 2/6/2019 at 6:13 PM, DXB said:

High silicon worries can come from a newbie owner enthusiastically applying excessive Dow Corning silicone grease to the oil filter gasket when changing the oil.

. . . .

BTW I have now exorcised my inner oil analysis demons entirely by never sending off oil for analysis any more.  

You mean there are special lubricants for oil filter seals? I've used fresh oil from Quart #1 (inside the cap of the "new" plastic bottles) ever since I was a teenager and had to poke a hole in the metal lid and shake the can to get some on my finger.

It's also good to hear that I'm not the only one here who doesn't do oil analysis.  

[PT20J]

I used a Tempest oil filter for the first time recently and it’s supposed to go on dry. Has anyone run into any problems with that? Now, what am I going to do with that half tube of DC-4 that I’ve had for 25 years?

[DXB]

Just now, PT20J said:

I used a Tempest oil filter for the first time recently and it’s supposed to go on dry. Has anyone run into any problems with that? Now, what am I going to do with that half tube of DC-4 that I’ve had for 25 years?

Works great!  Use that DC 4 liberally on your cabin and baggage door seals once a year to prolong their life.  

[bob865]

On 2/8/2019 at 7:06 PM, jaylw314 said:

IIRC it was finding a blue LED that gave everyone fits

Figuring out blue was worthy of a Nobel Prize.

https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-29518521