Under the Hood Insight: What Oil Testing Can Tell You About Engine Health

Ensure your engine’s health with an oil test.

You should get yourself tested. Ha, ha. But really, this article is exactly what you think it’s about. Trust us, getting tested is key to making sure you get to keep having fun with your ‘co-pilot’, wherever it is you want to do it. Most people are not the first to take a ‘test drive’, and you never know where it’s been. So before you’re married to the idea of keeping this one, you ought to know. Right?  Blackstone Labs thinks so too, and to that end, they have been doing engine oil sample testing for decades now.

They take an engine oil sample from you, in their USPS approved shipping container, and during testing, put it through its paces to see what its contents are. They ask for oil viscosity, its manufacturer, its age and other various key bits of information about the vehicle itself. After running it through its test, they compare it to the manufacturers original specifications and can tell you literally what is going on down to the T on the inside of your engine. From bearing wear, to oil life, they can tell you what to expect from the remaining years of your engines life and how to treat it going forward.

The process is very simple to do, as well. Go to their website and order an oil test kit. The kit itself is free, and you pay when your oil test results come back. It’s a great deal, coming in at a whopping $35. So, do yourself a favor and get a test, so you can keep having fun.

We sent a sample from our 2017 RAM 2500 Power Wagon to see how it looked. Keep scrolling to check out the results out the results.

Get your engine oil tested – we promise, it’s worth it.

The magicians of viscosity at Blackstone are really really smart people. (You might even refer to them as scientists or engineers.) They’ll take an oil sample, any oil sample really – from motor oil to transmission to hydraulic. They are experts in their field of determining what is really happening behind closed covers.

We sent an oil sample off from our 2017 RAM 2500 Power Wagon that, if we’re honest, has been through the ringer. We’d changed this particular oil sample out one week prior to a 5,000 mile long road trip from Louisville Kentucky all the way to Bozeman Montana and back. We averaged a speed of 80mph, navigating stop and go construction traffic as well as mountain passes and hauling a gross weight of ~9500 pounds. Add to that over a hundred off road miles climbing mountain passes, we beat the crap out of the truck in general. We put all of these 5000 miles on it in less than seven days time, and the remaining 3875 miles were all city commuting miles to the office and back.

So after all that, here’s how our Blackstone oil sample test report looked:

The comments section reads:

WILL: Thanks for the detailed operational notes. We can track either hours or miles, but not both, so we went with miles. Let us know if you’d rather go by hours. Metals are pretty good next to averages, which show typical wear for the 6.4L Hemi after about 5,100 miles on the oil. Given the fair amount of time spent idling, a little more iron isn’t unexpected (that metal will increase with such use), and honestly it’s not bad for an 8,875-mile run. Silicon could show dirt, but if air filtration checks out, you’re green-lighted for a 10K-mile OCI next. The 4.4 TBN is good.

As you can tell – Blackstone can get down to the nitty gritty of the inside of an engine and tell you what is going on, and for $35, oil sample testing is worth it. It is incredible insurance and peace of mind knowing your baby is healthy. Check out their services at the Blackstone website.

Editor’s Note: A version of this story previously appeared on treadmagazine.com in October 2018.