Oil Analysis - High Iron

[AlaskanEngineer]

Just got my Blackstone Labs Oil Analysis Report - found iron was 40ppm on 7500 miles (Rotella T6 Synthetic 5W40) -- all other values were normal/within spec. Blackstone report stated they thought all the cold starting was probably culprit (we had our -55F to -57F weather for all of January).

Thoughts? Anyone else see this high of a number on their oil analysis? Should I be getting worried?

Thanks

[rufushusky]

Over 7500 miles Fe at 40ppm isn't horrible...was the truck worked hard during the period? At those extreme cold temps maybe a 0w-40 or 0w-30 might be a better idea.

[AlaskanEngineer]

The majority of the time this was pretty gentle life - from Aug through November it was life as usual, December and January were colder than usual though - I use oil pan heaters, coolant heaters, lots of heaters (my electric bill skyrockets by $120 a month easily during cold snaps solely due to plugging in my truck more often & for longer before every start. I was thinking of switching to Amsoil 0W30 or another similar synthetic 0W30 but couldn't bring myself to drop that much money for a winter only oil (I like to get 5000 out of my $120 oil change, feels weird to put oil in Oct and take it out in March with only 3000 miles or so on it... which given my current job location is pretty realistic winter's worth of driving, far cry from a few years ago of 10,000 plus per winter.

zero towing worth mentioning, some hard acceleration in August (nothing wild), and 3 cold starts at around -25ish (F) (cold start defined as not being plugged in prior to start, usually due to hunting somewhere and coming back to a cold soaked truck)

Sound average?

[rufushusky]

Again given how harsh your operating conditions 40ppm isn't outside of "normal" any other wear metals in the same? Lead? Personally I would just continue to sample at regular intervals and see what the trend is.

[AlaskanEngineer]

All of the other wear metals were lower than the universal average, if I recall correctly, lead was down around 2 or 3 ppm, iron was the only one that was on the high side. I will likely just make a point of doing another oil analysis with each oil change for the next few changes to determine the trend as you suggested.