ISX and Bypass Oil Filter Systems

[Rawze]

(03-01-2016 )Kevin7898 Wrote:  You bring up several very good points. however anyone that does extended drains, without pulling an oil sample every 15k miles is stupid and asking for everything you brought up. There is absolutely 0 reason to dump good oil out if the sample comes back from a reputable lab clean. Besides every owner should run samples anyways regardless of if you are running extended drain intervals or not. Could save you a motor if you have an injector go and you are washing your cylinders and bearing with excess fuel.Samples will also tell you if your head gasket or other gaskets are going long before you see visual signs in the oil. It will also tell you how much of those minute particles are in your oil, letting you know if you have premature wear. Darn good insurance if you ask me, and for 25-50 bucks you can't go wrong, only save money. Cummins, cat etc are both great labs with a few other aftermarket companies, Polaris and black stone being two that I have used.

Not trying to convince people against other ideas or views, I can only go by what I have seen so far, so I will elaborate why I feel the way I do on this subject...

I lost faith in oil analysis to tell when to change your oil many years ago. Every single company that was trying to extend oil drains and replacement that had premature warranty claims was doing just that. They were relying on sampling to tell them that their oil was perfect all the time,.. only it was not. The problem is that oil analysis cannot detect separation very well, and that is exactly what was happening.

Sampling regularly is great for detecting problems, but that is where it stops. There is a big difference between having 120 PPM iron in your sample, then flushing it out,.. and between having 600 PPM iron in it because you had your so-called "perfectly good" oil in there for more than 60k miles. More PPM is more PPM! -- PERIOD! and if you put it in perspective, 12k miles, peaking 120 PPM = 120ppm in 12k miles. Extended oil changes and sampling would dictate 120ppm in 12k miles, 120-240 ppm in the oil at all times, running around in your engine the next 12k miles, 240,480 ppm at all times in the next 12k miles, and on and on and on until you changed it.

Next, is the fact that I have had at least 10 or so truck owners who have come here with high-end lab results from expensive places with oil samples that didn't detect this kind of thing at all... Here are some pics of the inside of trucks that actually had good sample results from the more high-end labs...



and it didn't detect this...



or this.,..




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I have actually found it more accurate to look on the inside of your engine covers and crank case covers to detect a very slow process coolant intrusion than it is to get a lab sample most of the time. Unless it is a measurable coolant loss, the sample will not see it very well.

People can disagree with this, I am fine with that. This is just my own experience with it so far. Try showing an oil sample record to a German hydraulics company for a $15,000 valve that just failed and they will laugh at you and ask you where the separation report is, denying your warranty claim all day long. Show them the receipts and records where you changed the oil at regular recommended intervals, and they will give you a new valve no questions asked. Try to take them to court on the claim, and they will slap you with a report in return showing an increase of 30% failures due to extended oil changes + sampling instead. -- This is what I saw first hand in the past, and when I was called in to eval. a failure of that specific valve, out of roughly 400 premature failures, only one had failed prematurely with regular oil and regular oil changes. All the rest were either extended oil changes and sample reports, or synthetic + sample reports and extended changes. This is simply what happened, your welcome to speculate on it all you want to. The german company also informed me that it was only in the USA/Brittan where they were having such premature failures, and that it centered around the oil sampling, synthetic oils, and extended change intervals. People who owned their machinery in other countries did not tend to do this, but simply change the oil regularly.

Go ahead and put your faith in those extended change intervals, maybe it works great for you. Personally, I lost that faith a long time ago when working with precision hydraulics equipment. Engines are much more forgiving in this manner, so it leaves the door wide open for speculation.