$200 Miata, used oil analysis

"Decay buys too many beaters" (decay) 07/03/2018 at 10:27 • Filed to: Decay's Beaters, $200 miata, Oil

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Decided it would be good for a laugh to send the oil from the $200 miata in for a blackstone analysis. Since I’ve been seeing slightly low oil pressure (and an issue where I had no oil pressure under breaking a for a while), I figured it would be a less than stellar report . Got it back today.

Amazingly, I’ve been beating on the car pretty hard, it has a totally unknown mileage motor in it, and the analysis came back almost as clean as the last on my track rat FR-S.

For reference, this is what a bad report looks like. This was the last time we needed to rebuild the ford 302 in our race mustang

I’m surprised, I expected it to come back a lot worse. Looks like I can take the Miata out on the track without much risk of the bottom end disintegrating.

Ash78, voting early and often > Decay buys too many beaters 07/03/2018 at 10:28

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What was their commentary from the bad report?

“Dude. Duuuuuude.”?

Decay buys too many beaters > Ash78, voting early and often 07/03/2018 at 10:45

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“ This isn’t the clean first report we wanted to issue this Cobra, but hopefully some TLC can bring improvement. Averages show typical wear for Ford’s 5.0L V-8 after ~3,700 miles of oil use. Aluminum and chrome show piston and ring wear. Iron is from steel parts. Usually, high copper and lead shows bearing wear. We’re really hoping an additive like Restore explains where the high copper/lead came from. If not, this is enough metal to show a real problem. Fuel dilution is high at 2.0%. Watch this engine closely, and use short runs (~1k miles) until things improve. Check back.”

Based on that, we pulled it apart and found this.

Aremmes > Decay buys too many beaters 07/03/2018 at 10:52

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Score!

diplodicus > Decay buys too many beaters 07/03/2018 at 10:55

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I was worried about the results for my 209k mi e30. Got them back recently and it wasn’t too bad . High chromium content so the rings are wearing out, but everything else is solid. I’m thinking someone at one point was running 5w30/10w30. That report was on 10w40 with a few days where ambient temps were a little warm for that. So I’ll probably send another in when it’s time to change the 15w50 that is in it now.

Decay buys too many beaters > diplodicus 07/03/2018 at 11:05

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I was really expecting to have to rebuild the miata engine, but based on this I’ll just keep on doing what I’ve been doing.

BeaterGT > Decay buys too many beaters 07/03/2018 at 11:37

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I should do this with both of my cars.  Just fearing surprises.

gettingoldercarguy > Decay buys too many beaters 07/03/2018 at 11:39

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T6 shell?

Decay buys too many beaters > gettingoldercarguy 07/03/2018 at 12:03

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Yep!

Decay buys too many beaters > BeaterGT 07/03/2018 at 12:07

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To me, it’s cheap enough and worth potential to know if there is any maintenance I should do before something expensive breaks...

We were going to race the mustang like that until we saw the report. 

BeaterGT > Decay buys too many beaters 07/03/2018 at 12:52

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Yeah definitely, the insight is invaluable. My Z06 has great oil pressure when warm and cold but it is still high mileage so maybe my next oil change will get sent out.