UOA of engine, diff, and trans
 

Before you read the reports,..know that my girlfriend wrote them so thats why they are not very professional :p

Aside from the mileage I calculated there are about 130 autox runs on the engine(motul 300v 5w30) and the transmission(honda mtf). I am concerned about the LE fluid now :suspect: as it only has about 15 autox runs on it since I changed it at the end of the season.
I have had the car since 20k miles and always used LE in the diff and changed it regularly and always before 10k miles usually. No "launches" ever, I always make sure I roll before getting on it when autoxing and I am always careful when shifting to 2nd and have had no grinds/"2nd gear chirp" ever. Always very careful even while driving hard. The differential fill before this run was actually with Amsoil 75w110 only because I needed to change it and couldnt wait for the LE in the mail. Maybe I am just getting after it harder this last season. Who knows. Is my iron wear out of control here????

I tend to change the tranny fluid after it starts to get notchy feeling otherwise Id usually run it much longer and as you can see, its good to go.

I love the comments, I wish my wife could analyze my fluids like that :)

Well, as the expert noted the tranny and oil samples are great, especially given the driving conditions. Nice wearing engine there.

The differential is definitely showing a higher rate of wear. I doubt it has anything to do with the type of fluid. I know when I sampled Amsoil vs LE1605 my wear numbers dropped 75%. Since this is the first run of LE1605 there may be some cleaning going on there, where it is pulling out old deposits and possible varnish/sludge. I know my first diff fluid change after I bought my car, the newer fluid brought out some old sludge like material from the diff housing. You should generally run a fluid at least a couple times to get a good baseline read of it.

Viscosity of the diff fluid looks good, additives look good too. The only single downfall of LE1605 is in extreme cold conditions where it gets really thick, but I don't think you have to worry about that in your region. Any chance that you didn't fill it properly when you put in the LE1605 ?, maybe if the car wasn't level ?. I'd run it again and sample it one more time, but going back to Amsoil certainly won't harm things either judging by the wear numbers with the Amsoil run.

I've always regarded auto-x driving as being really hard on cars, tight high-G turns with rpms usually kept high, with lots of sloshing around of the fluids. I think it's harder on the vehicle than track driving :drive:

Thanks Joey.
Do you mean the comment about not filling it correctly as that I didnt get enough in the diff? If so, I am sure I got it filled as I always get almost the whole bottle in, unless the rear of the car was higher and when I couldnt get the fill plug back in due to my lubed up fingers I lost more out of the hole than I thought :ponder:
and I do live in the mountains and it does get cold here, single digits is not uncommon in the winter at night and it usually warms up to the 20s when it gets that cold at night, but lows that low are not common, usually teens to 20s is more average but I never considered those "extreme" temps since I lived in Minnesota
I wish I never filled up with the Amsoil in the first place so I had a real basline.

Those are the best oil analysis comments I have ever seen.

Yeah I was just wondering if the fluid level was lower than usual for some reason, that always leads to extra wear in diffs and trannies. Hard to say how much fluid you lost during the fill procedure ?.

Hopefully Jack (IndyMac) will see this post, his experience with differential fluids would be helpful.

Anyone know where the nickle and titanium come from in the diff??

I checked my diff reports and both the Amsoil and LE1605 runs had nickel and titanium , though at different levels. I thought titanium might have been an anti-wear additive but it looks more like wear metal, along with nickel.

http://i933.photobucket.com/albums/a...ps4c224f50.jpg

Those are the nicest comments I've ever seen in an oil report. :thumbup:
You lucky bastard!;)

Hopefully Birdshot will see this post and will share his knowledge.




IMO:
Engine: if possible do a TBN next time, the Motul doesn't have a very high TBN when new (around 8)
A couple of PPM extra here and there means nothing, its parts per million!
The elements that show up in a UOA are very small, as far as I know the bigger wear parts are not even seen in the spectrometer.
That's my point: do not put too much value on ppm's in UOA's.

Trans: why not try Amsoil MTF?
OTOH: if it ain't broke don't fix it.

Diff: how much dirt (metal!) was there on the magnetic drain plug?
AutoX is concentrated accelaration and lots of diff work in tight corners.. right?
If the numbers don't drop I would go to a 75W-140, it NEVER hurts to have a thicker diff fluid.

:hello:

I have never seen a 1605 UOA that looked like this. Judging from what you said earlier, it was either under-filled or even worse, overfilled. I suspect over-filled since you changed it during cold weather (how in the world did you pump it?), and then after driving it the fluids expanded (heated up quite a bit as usual) causing more problems. Overfilling causes abnormal pressures and aeration. Air bubbles don't lubricate well. Check the relief valve and seals for any evidence of leaking or plugging.

Some car/truck manuals actually tell you to fill to fill hole, then drive the car or truck to normal operating temp, then pull the fill plug again to let any overfill drain again.

Sorry, but that's all I can offer you to check as possible source of trouble.

Your other reports look fine though.

Thanks for posting these!

One ray of hope is that a single bad report doesn't necessarily mean that your diff is damaged. You had some excess wear, but it will likely go on living a long healthy life :)

Re-sample later down the road.