Hughie
New Member
- Joined
- Feb 11, 2013
- Messages
- 4
- Location
- Australia
- Occupation
- Equipment Inspector & Earthmoving mechanic
My experience with extending drain intervals
There are two major components to consider if your planning to try to extend your oil drain intervals and be scientific and serabout it.
Using a sample analysis program like the CAT SOS service or any of the independant or other OEM sponsored services is essential if your wanting to keep a handle on the condition of your additive packs. As time goes on various additives 'oxidise' and your lubricant loses its ability to provide proper lubrication as well as managing the build up of harmful elements within your lubricant and as you would know, this can happen based on simply time that the oil has been exposed to moisture/atmosphere or out of the drum and just sitting in the crankcase.
The other factor, and the main cause of progressive engine/ component wear is the build up of carbon and soot in your engine lubricant. Soot particles are generally between 3-5 micron in size and too small for the standard OEM recomended engine oil filter to catch. I have spent a fair bit of time pouring over sample results from Cat and keeping an eye on the trends and i can tell you that there is a direct link betwwen the quantity of soot in an engine oil sample and the rate of fine iron generation. you can literally see it on the chart... soot increases, and just behind it so does the fine iron. the effect graphs like like the weight of a snoball rolling down the hill. (this is obviously a chart generated with data taken from a number of samples over a single oil drain).
You change the oil and the filter and the soot content in the lubricant drops away. The fine iron drops away as well however never to the same point that it was before you pushed your drain interval out.
You can manage the soot quantity, likewise you can extend the service life of your lubricants well past the engine OEM and the lubrican OEM reccomendations but you really need to use a centrifugal filter to catch the soot particles or some sort of online depth media filtration system.
This can either be done by kidney looping your oil during a service (this is the expensive option due to the time taken to set up, purchase the equipment, and to have any measurable effect on the clenliness of your oil the rule of thumb is that you must filter for long enough for 10 times the crankcase fluid capacity to pass through the filter. Effectivly running the 35 odd litres that your CAT C15 ACERT holds through your filter 10 times and this can take a while).
The cheaper method is setting up a system on your equipment for online filtration, this involves putting a centrifugal oil filter or a depth media filter on your equipment and as the engine is running you are harvest a bit of the flow that the engine oil pump provides to run your filter, its important that you set up the filter and system so that you dont comprimise the engine oil pressure requirments. Even if you only filter approx 5% of the engine oil pumps output you will make a significant difference. (if you do this you really need to do it in conjunction with your OEM as if they happen to be feeling unreasonable on the day you call them they might tell you to go jump and that you will lose your warranty.) Reality is that you can do it safely and with no detriment to your engines lube system.
Measuring success, you need to have a means of verifying whether your making a difference or just wasting your time stuffing around, to do this you really need to be using a sampling system in conjunction with a lab. If your a big or serious enough player to consider running the risk, you should be moving your maintenance strategies toward a preventitive/ predicitve regime as opposed to most people that run a reactive type regime. If your one of these serious players, you would already be running a sampling regime. An extension to this is that if you are going to spend the cash on the sample lab service you are mad if you dont actually look at the results and take a little note of the analysts comments and recommendations.
If you already use CATs online Oil Commander service take a bit of time to check it out, It has some seriously good trending functions among other things.
By the way, I do not work for CAT, I am a diesel plant mechanic (I do have an IMCL lube analyst accreditation) and I work in the fleet engineering support team of a large mine. We have a fleet of over 95 surface and underground machines, ranging from 793C haul trucks through to Atlas Copco Jumbos.
We change all of our engine oils at 250 hr intervals.
Cheers
Hughie
There are two major components to consider if your planning to try to extend your oil drain intervals and be scientific and serabout it.
Using a sample analysis program like the CAT SOS service or any of the independant or other OEM sponsored services is essential if your wanting to keep a handle on the condition of your additive packs. As time goes on various additives 'oxidise' and your lubricant loses its ability to provide proper lubrication as well as managing the build up of harmful elements within your lubricant and as you would know, this can happen based on simply time that the oil has been exposed to moisture/atmosphere or out of the drum and just sitting in the crankcase.
The other factor, and the main cause of progressive engine/ component wear is the build up of carbon and soot in your engine lubricant. Soot particles are generally between 3-5 micron in size and too small for the standard OEM recomended engine oil filter to catch. I have spent a fair bit of time pouring over sample results from Cat and keeping an eye on the trends and i can tell you that there is a direct link betwwen the quantity of soot in an engine oil sample and the rate of fine iron generation. you can literally see it on the chart... soot increases, and just behind it so does the fine iron. the effect graphs like like the weight of a snoball rolling down the hill. (this is obviously a chart generated with data taken from a number of samples over a single oil drain).
You change the oil and the filter and the soot content in the lubricant drops away. The fine iron drops away as well however never to the same point that it was before you pushed your drain interval out.
You can manage the soot quantity, likewise you can extend the service life of your lubricants well past the engine OEM and the lubrican OEM reccomendations but you really need to use a centrifugal filter to catch the soot particles or some sort of online depth media filtration system.
This can either be done by kidney looping your oil during a service (this is the expensive option due to the time taken to set up, purchase the equipment, and to have any measurable effect on the clenliness of your oil the rule of thumb is that you must filter for long enough for 10 times the crankcase fluid capacity to pass through the filter. Effectivly running the 35 odd litres that your CAT C15 ACERT holds through your filter 10 times and this can take a while).
The cheaper method is setting up a system on your equipment for online filtration, this involves putting a centrifugal oil filter or a depth media filter on your equipment and as the engine is running you are harvest a bit of the flow that the engine oil pump provides to run your filter, its important that you set up the filter and system so that you dont comprimise the engine oil pressure requirments. Even if you only filter approx 5% of the engine oil pumps output you will make a significant difference. (if you do this you really need to do it in conjunction with your OEM as if they happen to be feeling unreasonable on the day you call them they might tell you to go jump and that you will lose your warranty.) Reality is that you can do it safely and with no detriment to your engines lube system.
Measuring success, you need to have a means of verifying whether your making a difference or just wasting your time stuffing around, to do this you really need to be using a sampling system in conjunction with a lab. If your a big or serious enough player to consider running the risk, you should be moving your maintenance strategies toward a preventitive/ predicitve regime as opposed to most people that run a reactive type regime. If your one of these serious players, you would already be running a sampling regime. An extension to this is that if you are going to spend the cash on the sample lab service you are mad if you dont actually look at the results and take a little note of the analysts comments and recommendations.
If you already use CATs online Oil Commander service take a bit of time to check it out, It has some seriously good trending functions among other things.
By the way, I do not work for CAT, I am a diesel plant mechanic (I do have an IMCL lube analyst accreditation) and I work in the fleet engineering support team of a large mine. We have a fleet of over 95 surface and underground machines, ranging from 793C haul trucks through to Atlas Copco Jumbos.
We change all of our engine oils at 250 hr intervals.
Cheers
Hughie