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hookliftpete · 02-09-2025, **(Subject: Oil brands )**

I will second the cat sampling labs, the one that I have used was helpful if I had questions regarding their results.

Rawze · 02-09-2025, **(Subject: Oil brands )**

(02-09-2025 )amermextrucker Wrote: I was running Chevron Delo 15w40 with 3 qts of Walmart conventional gear oil and 3 bottles ( small) of rislone zinc additive, oil sample where beautiful.

just make sure those zinc levels do not exceed 1440 ppm. After that, it starts doing more harm than good.

JimT

My cummins engine had a factory sticker for Delo so that's what I started using and I've had no reason to switch off. Walmart has consistently had it for around $17 a gallon delivered to my home so that's not too bad. Recently depleted my stock of their 15w40 400 SDE conventional oil and switched over to the new 15w40 400 XLE syn-blend. The first oil fill was a bit off, it was summer, I had just installed a new oil pan and I tried a 85w140 gear oil (Traveller brand). Didn't like how it sounded but after 15k the oil sample didn't look bad except for unusually high silicon which I think was due to dirt on the drain valve. 200k miles on the inframe and my iron is 4ppm after 15k miles. Anyway, next fill was all XLE and back to the usual Traveller 80w90 gear lube and the engine immediately sounded normal again so I'll probably stick to the 80w90. Costs the same as the walmart supertech but I can get it in bulk.

Anyway, like it's been mentioned, pick a well known brand with wide availability, base your change interval on your fuel mileage and sample regularly to monitor long term trends and watch for deviations.

There's plenty of oil sample solutions out there, I personally recommend any vendor which utilizes POLARIS Laboratories (submissions and reports handled via their Horizon app or https://eoilreports.com/) as they seem to provide the most comprehensive analysis. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong). OPS (now owned by everyone's favorite PP) has a nice kit with everything you need including prepaid fedex labels, but there's nothing special about them, it's just the one I'm familiar with.