Oil analysis with high Silicon proportions in a IMS hybrid bearing engine

Hi guys: I received the result from the used oil analysis in my car. Car has now 44.300 km last oil change: 11 months and 6.700 km Everything was Ok except the high proportion of Silicon in the oil = 99 particles per million My car has a IMS hybrid bearing installed. The hybrid bearing is from SKF, with steel races and sintered silicon nitride ultra-low friction roller *****. Performs up to 15 times longer in poor lubrication environments. The chemist told me that there is no contamination about dust because there would be a 1/3 alluminun proportion with silicon, and it's 4. Here you can see the results of the analysis: If you need something to be translated, tell me please The question is: Does anyone who owns a IMS retrofit kit in his car, send used oil to analize ? Could you post the results please?

so this is good? please educate us.... silicon is good, no?

Silicon could wear internal parts. The oil is contaminated Nevertheless is was time to do the oil change, but this percentage is so high Some oils are formulated with 7 or 10 ppm of Silicon as aditive

I think I see where this is going. It sounds to me like someone doesn't do a lot of used oil analysis and doesn't know that RTV sealant that is used on cam covers, sump plates and etc shows up in UOA as SILICON! I have HUNDREDS of UOA from retrofitted engines both before and after the IMSR is carried out, I will share a couple on Monday. I have never noted an increase in silicon levels when carryoing out UOA on a retrofitted engine. We pull samples from EVERY engine that we retrofit and build from scratch to build the database for purposes just like this post. Silicon nitride ***** do not wear, not at all. When the material is used in Human prosthetic devices there are companies that have a hard time convincing the FDA that the results they see in testing and application are not fake. The amount of wear that is present is so low that it is unbelievable. I've been using silicon nitride in engines since 1997 when we started making cam followers from the material. In engines that have all 8 followers made of pure silicon nitride I have never seen an increase in silicon in the oil and thats over a 14 year period. If you have silicon in this sample, someone used too much RTV sealant bon some portion of the engine during reassembly- period. I send 20+ UOA samples to our lab per month and have vast experience with what RTV can do to an oil sample. If you'd like I can have a CLS from the API give a more detailed account of why RTV shows up as silicon. I do not see a percentage of fuel dilution in this sample, which can play a key role in the entire sample's accuracy. The TAN is also not noted, but perhaps these are done differently in Spain than here.

Thank you very much Jake. I'm trying to learn everyday, and as soloporsche.com administrator, we're always looking to grow. Spanish automotive culture is so far from german, english, and american culture. I love visiting BITOG forum. That's why I decided to look for a High Quality Laboratory in Spain. An expert chemist adviced me to talk to "Tekniker Wearcheck", and they accepted to colaborate with Soloporsche. (as we have a Sponsor Section, they are giving us support too) My sample was the first, and I had a long phone conversation to the chemist engineer. He told me that Silicon could be due to Sealant because there was no relationship to dust or other contaminant. They work for British Petroleum (BP & Castrol, Elf FINA TOTAL, etc), and do UOA in industry machinery, digger, heavy bulldozzers, etc. They have no experience to Porsche engines, but they have the best technlogy. besides he told me that the viscosity @ 100� C was a bit lower that they should be... the SAE 50 was lowered to SAE 40 They told me that 5W50 oils are not very stable So I must thank you you for your comments. I was a bit worried about Silicon Nitride *****... Best regards Jake Joaquin

Rest assured that the silicon is from anything except the silicon nitride *****. We did extensive UOA before any IMSR bearing was sold and never saw this. The day I installed the first bearing I hald the engine at 7K RPM for 4 hours on my dyno and then pulled an oil sample. The engine got so hot that the bolts holding the exhaust system together shattered and were laying on the test cell floor. No elevated silico in that sample either. 5W 50 is very unstable, we learned that working with Joe Gibbs Racing Oil last year as we teamed up to have Lubrizol carry out the design of a new oil for the M96. What we went with was a 5/40 and it is working great in my engines. Lubrizol does all our oil analysis, they are an independent lab and they actually are one of 4 companies that make the oil additive packages for all the other oil companies. You have to buy oil in 3000 gallon batches at a time to get them to talk to you, luckily they appreciate what we have done with Gibbs on the Flat 6 Oil. We do. Just like Lubrizol. Next time use less RTV sealant and that oil sample will look better.

Seems to me that it would be helpful to have a comparison of the baseline (new oil) and the used oil sample. Then you can question where the contaminants and metal ions are coming from. The other analysis (Search for Oil Analyst) actually had a normal range column, sort of like the ranges you get on blood tests. This is much more useful than the report from Tekniker above. I guess the coding on bottom for Normal, watch and dangerous are applied by the analyst conducting the analysis.

UOA is only as good as the person carrying it out and how they calibrate their equipment for the oil to be tested. The good thing about our own oil is we have virgin samples of each drum and that is always used as a control. I'll post some of these next week as a comparison. The good thing about having the lab that makes the oil additives (and oil in our case) do the analysis is they have exact parameters for calibration.

"Your own oil" sounds great. The best Porsche specialist in Spain recommends 5W40 for M96 engines as you do (Valvoline Synpower 5W40 is a great oil too) i'll be expectating to see more news about your oil

The source of the silicon could also be as a result of a low restriction air filter (i.e. K&N). More likely it is from the anti-foaming additive used in the motor oil, which is perfectly normal. The only way to know for sure is to have a control for the oil you are testing, to know how it compares when used versus a virgin sample. It can't be one of the ceramic *****, because if it was, the engine would be toast. Silicon nitride does not wear. It only fails when it's the cheap Chinese stuff.

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Beat me to it. Silicon in oil can get here from air. The engine air filter allows too much particulate matter (dust) through and most of this dust is made up of silica which shows up as silicon in the oil analysis. Sincerely, Macster.

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In fact It was de first thing we thought, but my air filter is a OEM one. The technician of the laboratory told me in the report: Viscosity is low for an oil 5w50. Contamination by fuel is not appraised. An abnormally high silicon content is appraised. To external contamination (dust) and/or silicon meetings or similar can have. (It does not seem that it is external contamination since aluminum presence is not detected along with silicon in proportion 1/3)

Another thing I'm going to do is to use this engine clean: IAs my engine has RTV sealant residues , I'll try to clean it up as much as possible before the next OCI

Please do not do this.. Doing so will dislodge all the deposits within your engine and they will be collected in the valvetrain. Lifters and tensioners suffer horribly from this as they are at the end of the oiling system. Do some searches on this topic for more info. The best way to flush these engines is to do a couple of very low mileage interval oil changes.

Thank you very much Jake! I haven't the fainstest idea about the problems caused by engine clean products. I'll do the change oil next Saturday, and after 1.000 km I'll send a sample to the laboratory again. I'm not going for more than 2.000-3000 km until the next OCI maximun 6 months but UOA before to check

Man I just tossed out my oil from when my IMS bearing was installed. Oh well I'll get it next time around. FLAT6 I'll be sure to send the results your way.

Send the results on.. We have hundreds of samples already, so its not something that we "need".

VIRGIN OIL ANALYSIS

I have an otherwise stock x51 engine with the IMS bearing installed. I've been using mobil 1 15w50 for the last 2 years with 5k mile intervals. The car has seen plenty of autocross use and a few long trips. I have since started using motul xcess, I believe 5w40. Here are my results: note that I have only 2 parts per million of silicon .

Excellent results!! After the oil analysis, I did the oil change, and now I have 3.500 km run on it I'm going to get another sample to check what about silicon

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+1 here.. when I had my x51 pan installed we had a little too much silicon applied and it showed up in the oil analysis and then after we changed oil things went back to normal. if you are worried about the silicon send your next oil in again and I'll bet it drops down to normal levels...

My engine has never been dismantled and reassembled There's no chance to get silicon added in the engine due to a repair work because the engine is the same as comes OEM the first day. I'll check a sample in this new oil to assure It's clean

Dredging another zombie from the depths. I received an oil analysis indicating high levels of silicon. I did have the sump plate off, so it could be from sealant, but I was also wondering if there was any chance of it being related to bore scoring. I believe one of the materials used when they coat the bores is silicon; "Alusil" and "Lokasil" and so on.

If you removed the sump plate it's most likely that. I had a bump too once I removed mine. Only way to know is to run about 3k miles on the new oil and test again and see if things went down.

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Agreed. We see higher silicon numbers from using RTV sealant in the subsequent UOA, so I'd expect that to go down next time you test the oil. If it doesn't go down or it goes up, then I'd be concerned.

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What was your silicon amount?

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98 ppm.

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That�s pretty darn high. I think mine went to 20 after I resealed the oil pan with DreiBond.

Mine went from 6 to 33 after resealing my sump. I still wouldn't worry. Run another test after next oil change and see if things went back down. Just shorten the change interval if it bothers you.

About to test my oil again after having my sump dropped and bores scoped in March. Bet I will see the same thing.

Just got my UOA back, also had elevated levels of silicon (17ppm) that was not present during the first UOA I did upon purchasing the car. Hoping its due to me removing the sump plate and resealing it with silicon (don't remember what product I ended up using...) I did not remove the sump during this last oil change, so we'll have to wait until a put a few thousand miles on the car to see if it goes away. Oh and also, the previous owner did have one of those stupid K&N air filters, that I swapped out for a conventional paper MANN air filter about 1000 miles into this oil change, so I wonder if that has contributed to the high silicon levels.

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Anything but a paper filter will let more dirt into the engine, but if you resealed the sump, that always leaches silicon into the oil and is to be expected in the UOA.

Would silicon based detail dressings used to detail the engine bay, inlet ducting, air box etc cause an elevated silicon reading (including the insides of the air box and ducting to the throttle body (don't ask why someone would do that, I just did, without thinking as I wanted everything to look and feel new).

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I sure hope not. I can't imagine an armor all type dressing would get past the air filter and affect the UOA.

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Ah, but what if you stripped all the airbox down and the inlet pipework, right back to the throttle body and detailed everything both inside and out, leaving a silicon residue within the inlet tract and air box, post filter?

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That's a great question. Not sure what that would actually do.