Is One Oil Analysis Lab just as good as the next?

I have decided to stop using Blackstone due to their inordinately long turnaround times. Somewhere else in these forums, Polaris Labs was recommended. Their pricing is similar and Polaris claims 2-day turnaround, while Blackstone claims a 2-week turnaround but seldom delivers results in that timeframe. Recently I took two samples from an oil change. I sent the first one to Blackstone, waited seven days, then sent the other to Polaris Labs. Five days after I sent the sample to Polaris, I received the report. There was a weekend in the midst of those five days, so assuming three days in transit, they did deliver within two days of receipt. Meanwhile, more than two weeks has elapsed since sending the first sample to Blackstone and I continue to await their report. Am I missing something? Is Blackstone more thorough or accurate in some way? Or is Polaris simply more efficient?

I’m curious to know if the lab results were the same??? I’m going on 3-4 weeks waiting on Blackstone results. I would definitely like another option.

I’ll let you know - as soon as Blackstone finishes. Check back in a few weeks!

I wouldn't expect accuracy to be different. That being said, I have been using Blackstone for many years and never had that much of a lag, as you have been seeing. I know, some time ago, they had some shipping label issues, where the label was misprinted or something, causing them to take longer to get to them. They offered new labels to replace the old ones, so you may want to call them and confirm you have the right ones... especially if you purchased a pack in the past or something (as I normally do). See: https://www.blackstone-labs.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/Oct-21-ENG-newsletter-1.pdf That said, I would welcome a better deal service... who wouldn't? So please do keep us posted.

I'm guessing that there are plenty of labs out there that will do oil analysis. Having done elemental analysis myself once upon a time, there are standard procedures to do such (it's science, after all). What I really like about Blackstone are the following: (1) Awesome customer service. They saved my butt per my soon-to-be 258K mile 2.9L engine, have had multiple email conversations back and forth with those guys. (2) They have a database of their other clients' sample averages, so it's about comparing apples-to-apples as to what to expect per different cars. (3) Price is genuinely a bargain, given that they give you all the stuff you need, prepaid envelope, etc. -- let alone the wide difference of elements analyzed. I doubt one would find a better price. As a lot of you know, I'm from the school of thought (on Blackstone's recommendation, which I trust as these guys do planes and not just cars) -- to largely go by mileage and not time intervals. This means, one can plan their oil change ahead of time. Lots of people like to do their oil changes at the end of the driving season (for our cars that are winterized) and one could plan ahead per the schedule. No wrong answers here one's preferences -- but I definitely think Blackstone is worth the wait. Yes, my last result took a while but the results were priceless. Cheers.

BS does seem to take quite some time. It took about 3 weeks on my Outback and I’m still waiting on the Cayman results. Lake Speed does offer an in depth (pricier?) analysis Oil Analysis Kit — SPEEDiagnostix

My tracking information indicated that Blackstone got my sample on July 19th. They emailed me my results today. So 3 weeks. i did a quick Google search and it looks like there are lots of options besides Blackstone. I might try something different next time. Blackstone is a good value and I like their personal service, but i wasn't very impressed with their verbiage this time. in my case I had some specific comments about oil temps when I sent my oil in and I didn’t think that they responded adequately. If I was just wondering about oil change intervals and red flags, I would be fine with Blackstone I think.

Just curious, how did they save your butt (and your 2.9L engine)? What was the issue you were having? I just had the analysis done on my 2.9L Cayman 987.2 , which looked okay and I hope I'm not missing something important.

Again, I don't work for Blackstone and they don't sponsor me. However, my interactions with them have been excellent. Methinks there's good reason why they're swamped -- they're in extraordinarily high demand. Meanwhile, elemental analysis is science -- and good science can and should be able to be practiced anywhere. @mdb_1800 - Good question, and congrats on owning one of arguably the most durable engines to ever come out of Zuffenhausen. You're not missing anything here; apologies for my wording potentially raising alarms. When I bought my 2.9L, it had a very incomplete service history. I knew I was seriously rolling the dice, and realized that there were two likely problems (power steering leak, driver's side valve core gasket leak) that the previous owner clearly knew about but didn't point out. Per the gasket leak, I didn't even know until later if my diagnosis was correct; it was very seriously a question of potentially scrapping the engine -- especially given the high mileage and the time/cost to even just access the engine. So as my 2.9L is currently on the cusp of 258K miles, before having the repairs done, it was a question of "is the engine still good?" and/or "do I do an engine swap" if it wasn't? Well, the Blackstone results demonstrated that the engine's health was still great -- and they agreed with me the no swap was necessary. I had total peace of mind with proceeding with the repairs, and my trust P-car still drives beautifully. Can't wait to hit 258K shortly. If you're at all interested, I chronicle more about all this in previous threads. Cheers.

I have sent every oil sample to BS for the last 7 years and luckily the data has been pretty benign but service has gotten consistently slower. The feedback is pretty generic but my results are very neutral. The last few samples took 4 weeks using their mail to getting results.

I started using Blackstone about 12-15 years ago and their turnaround was days. It never took more than 2 weeks from the day I sent the sample off in the mail to receive the report. Sometimes it was 7-8 days. My last sample required over 3 weeks for the report to be sent which is really unacceptable. I’m not sure if I’ll turn elsewhere for testing service the next time, but if the next time requires three+ weeks again I think I will be looking at other options. Like others I’ve appreciated their service in the past, but timeliness is an important part of service.

I just started using Blackstone last year and have sent in just two samples, but the turn-around on both of them was 4 weeks. Their customer service seems to be excellent, as I had mis-labeled one of the samples and I was transferred directly to the tech who did the analysis. No instant gratification here, but their work seems to be top-notch, so I'll continue to wait.

FWIW, you may want to check this out. Posted by a guy on bitog....not me

Yes, they are getting to be 3-4 weeks, i am waiting on a Highlander sample now. I called them last CS sample and they are swamped. Also coming from the test and measurement industry and knowing the cost of the analyzers and speed of analysis this is not surprising, maybe they should invest on another ICP.

I chatted with Blackstone over email. They are swamped, indeed. They are hiring new people, setting up a new lab for processing, etc. They expected a slow-down over the summer, as they have had in the past, but they have not gotten that, so they are a little behind, I guess. So, at least they're saying they're doing more to improve times... only time will tell, of course. My changes are at 10k miles now, and I'm still getting excellent results, so I won't be doing one for over a year...

OP here. I've been monitoring my latest sample sent to Blackstone. Here are the relevant dates and time intervals so far: July 26: Shipped sample via USPS [3 days] July 29: USPS tracking info indicates delivery to Blackstone [7 days] Aug. 5: Blackstone website states "Checked In" [9 days] Aug. 14: Blackstone website states "Testing" From this I conclude that the sample took seven days to transit from their own mail room to their intake process. Then more than another week to emerge as a sample to be tested. And the clock is still ticking on the results being furnished to me. As I mentioned above, it took Polaris only five days TOTAL (which included USPS shipping time over a weekend) to email me results on a sample taken from the same oil change. When Blackstone finally sends me results, I will publish them side-by-side with those from Polaris for comparison here.

Looking forward to the comparison data!

Someone once said to me - if you want excellence you may have to pick from time, cost, and accuracy. You need all 3, if any one goes missing you aren't getting excellence. It's like any other product that's doing well, they usually are a bit hesitant to invest in more people and equipment until it's obvious that they can't not do that. It sounds like they've gotten to that point, and I expect that complaints about turnaround time will die down. I'm just curious - the folks who are desperate for fast oil data - is there a reason you need it right now? Doing track days? Suspect something is wrong?

Don, as you surmised, my being "desperate" for a quick turnaround on the oil analysis is not particularly logical. I recently switched from Mobil 1 to Liquid Moly and ran the latter in my daily driver for the first time on the track. An experiment of sorts. I wanted the results of the post-event oil analysis before filling the sump with fresh oil, but I had already purchased more Liqui Moly, so the decision had really already been made without the results. Still, I felt annoyed about the slow-to-arrive oil analysis report from Blackstone, so I became motivated to look for other options. I reasoned that the day might come when I truly needed a fast answer, so I gave Polaris a try.

Blackstone and Polaris lab results for identical samples (I transcribed everything to a single spreadsheet for comparison):

Remember, Blackstone has nothing to sell you. Only their evaluation. Most others in that industry want to sell you more than the test results. IMO. Your mileage may vary.

I would not ever use USPS, nor UPS, for anything I wanted a quick return on. Perhaps in this crunch time frame for BS, they ought to consider priority processing for a cost.

In case anyone is interested, here are the actual reports from both Blackstone and Polaris.

Interesting spreadsheet - but sort of useless for making a decision since either one could be correct. When you say "identical samples" - this was two samples pulled from the same oil drain? Or was it one sample split between the two labs? The reason I ask that - I could see numbers changing as the oil drains, some stratification of the oil is bound to happen, so a sample taken early in the drain vs one taken a bit later might have different values for the labs results, and both could not only be right - but also be correct (although different). The only difference I can see that would concern me would be the iron reading and that difference is minimal enough that I'd be unable to determine what should be done (if anything.) One thing that I had Blackstone do back when I was involved in doing some extensive/intensive testing on oils used in BMW motorcycles was have them run a virgin sample - so we'd have some idea where we were starting from with the oil. Blackstone was happy to do that - and did it for free (although they knew it was going to gain them some exposure, they seemed as curious as we were about oil changes as it's used.) I'd love to see a virgin sample of Driven's oil vs a sample with 5,000 miles on it, and the same on one of the better and well-regarded Euro brands (Lubri Moly, Fuchs, etc.) We may be chasing our tails with the oil analysis - especially in track conditions - it would seem the oil would be changing enough that common sense would say that it should be changed after every track event, unless samples were coming back with the oil in the same condition it went onto the track in.

I had an informative conversation with one of the lab techs at Polaris today. He assured me that the difference in numbers on the wear metals is not significant. At single digit ppm values, the difference is well within the tolerance of the test itself. He agreed that it would have been more scientific to divide a single sample to send to the two labs, but stated that the fact the results for the wear metals are all single digit numbers means that the two labs are in agreement - there is no indication of abnormal wear.

Good to hear they're responsive. You might ask them if they've done a virgin sample to have a baseline for the additive packages so you have some idea how long the oil can be used for..