Originally posted by Roz 1999 SVT-C: I feel ya on that one....lol....some people do here too...but its understandable, oil is the life blood of the car, and if the blood is tainted...then well....we all know what can happen.
Roz
Well, there's a point when the love of your car becomes an obsession. Some of the TDI guys have gone beyond that, especially those who refuse to run anything less than a group 4 synthetic basestock oil and run oil analysis in an attempt to get the most miles out of their oil, post figures about the analysis that requires a chemistry degree to comprehend, rather than simply following the rather generous 10,000 mile factory specified oil change interval using a cheaper but more than satisfactory group 3 synthetic basestock and then calling those of us that do the latter "cheap" or criticize the purchase of a group 3 oil when it's more than $4 a quart.
Threads get locked over stuff like that.
Comprehsive oil analysis tells you a lot more than just the condition of your oil. It can tell you a great deal about the overall condition of the engine and tip you off to developing problems long before they become a functional issue. The earlier analogy to oil being the "blood" of the engine carries over to oil analysis -- it is to automotive diagnostics what taking a blood sample is to medical diagnostics.
Ease or difficulty of interpreting the data depends on the lab you use. Some make their reports more user-friendly than others.
