I've heard of this before and I always wondered what the purpose was.
Any engine will wear, and there will be trace metals in the oil. If
your analysis says that there are trace metals in the oil but the engine
is running fine, what are you supposed to do about it? I don't think
you would immediately put new rings and bearings in. And if you aren't
going past your required change intervals then you just keep driving the
car until you get indications that there are really problems with rings
or bearing clearances.
As for 15k oil change intervals- I would not do that personally. Most
cars used to recommend oil change intervals less than half that, and I
thought those intervals were not conservative enough. I have gone with
3k or 4k miles for my own vehicles, using normal dyno oil, and around
30k for the automatic transmissions. My current car has the computer in
the dash that tells you when an oil change is required, and it also runs
Mobil 1, but the computer generally asks for an oil change somewhere
around 6k miles. Of course there are people out there who never change
their oil, they just occasionally pour more in. I've worked in my
father's garage enough to see what the results of prolonged oil change
intervals are, and I don't want to do that to my engines. Even if the
oil keeps lubricating the bearings, it builds up deposits and will lead
to clogging of passages and so forth. Of course YMMV, and everyone gets
to choose their own service intervals, pay their money and take their
chances.
> Anyone else using Blackstone labs or other services for oil & fluid
> analysis? I sent off samples of oil and ATF from my mom's 2003 BMW
> 530. She's been going by the dashboard "service soon" indicator,
> which works out to over 15,000 miles between oil changes (!!!) BMW
> also claims the ATF and differential oil are "lifetime" durable. I
> called bull on that, and have started doing oil changes for her, and
> swapped the ATF. Sent samples to Blackstone, actually hoping for some
> bad news to shock & awe her into taking better care of the thing (she
> intends to keep driving it for a good while.)
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