What's in there that has nickel in it?

Anything in particular that is a nickel alloy? Or is that pretty much everything... Last couple of oil samples have shown a bit too much nickel.

 

That's pretty much everything. The crank, bearings, and the rings are all steel alloys.

 

lol yup

 

Nice chart.

You gonna stretch things out a bit... maybe go 4 or 5 k miles?

 

Pistons?
Intake/Exhaust valves?
Oil cooler?
Oil filter?
Anything with the word alloy may easily have nickel in it.

Oh..a lot of radiators and oil coolers are "brazed" (high temperaure way of soldering metals) with nickel alloys.


Dave.... you are the man..
One of only a few that I would expect to be sending their motor oil out to have it analyzed (especially on a daily driver). How clever.
Bet you hate it when answers create questions, I know I do
..

 

Ok, i dont know nothing about the "hemi" but on trucks(diesel) when the oil is checked and if there is copper and nickel found, the first thing done is a bearing roll on the crank. I have no clue if that would apply here but just a shot.

 

I think I got it.
Our blocks are made of "high nickel alloy cast iron".

..

 

Not for a couple of years... When I bought the car I went for the extended warranty (service plan) AND the extended maintenance plan. The extended maintenance plan (5 yr or 75K) was $1700. It's from Chrysler so it's good at any dealer and (at the time) I figured they weren't going to fold. I did the math and the oil changes came to about that. I've never had a car that I kept less than 10 years. So it covers all the scheduled services, parts, labor, AND a rental car if they keep it over night for any reason, service or repair. The extended warranty actually does not include the rental car (I don't think). Most of the services are basically oil and filter but 1 or 2 of them are significant. So I get my oil and filter changed every 3000... Maybe when the maintenance contract runs out and I'm changing it myself.

Well, these guys are good. They know what engine I've got. I think the reason they're perplexed is that something doesn't quite jive. Like they would expect something else to be elevated with the nickel if something was wearing prematurely or something was failing. The beauty of it is this. I've got a couple more years on the extended warranty. Now I've got a record/proof of something going on IF something is going on. If it gets worse or persists I'll have the dealer note it and or check for whatever. If it fails a long time later I'll have a record that it started while it was still under warranty and it will be covered. Like I said these guys are good. I have/had a '99 ford expedition. A rod started knocking -- barely (don't ask... the friggin (ex)wife said she was getting the oil changed...). I decided not to deal with it for some reasons and just baby it until it failed. It went over 10K that way. Every 3K I got an oil analysis and you could see it happening. Before it started knocking they said "this and that are elevated and commonly found in bearings and a few other things", then "This is getting worse and strongly indicates that you may have a problem that should be checked" and then "you're definitely looking at a failure and we're guessing at a rod or main bearing in that engine." Haha, few thousand later it threw the rod and seized up.

 

I saw a nice Excel spread sheet a guy was doing on another thread.
It showed Mileage and Date above the data he had from each oil test.

..

 

You mean like the report in the first post?

 

Doh...
Yep that is it. His was a little different. He also did not have a Nickel problem.
Excuse the link to a SHO site.....
http://www.v8sho.com/images/oilanalysis%20115k.pdf
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I don't know if this helps at all, but here is mine. This was miles 2000-7000 on my original 426 that had the Arrington crank gear issue putting the oil pump in a bind, and also had the detonation problem leaving my piston skirts and cylinder walls all scarred up.

I had almost no nickel, but here was the first indication that I had orther metal (oil pump?) abrading my bearings...hence his comments.

 

Here are my last 2

 

Thanks for sharing guys... I was wondering what things looked like at more than 3k miles. Looking at these, and that awesome SHO, I'm not sure if I see anything that makes me nervous with 6k mile intervals.

Anyone disagree with that?

I wanna baby my baby though so I just might drop down to a nice round 5k interval.

I love stuff that pays for itself, never thought about it like that.

 

Before the blower, I did 5K mile interval oil changes. You should be fine with that.

 

Cool!

And just a comnment on the SHO, why is it that everytime a boosted V6 comes out the pundants always start talking about the demise of the V8??