I am looking at buying a John Deere 544h With 16000 hrs on it. The machine came out of TX its fairly tight, no corrosion pretty clean. The price is not horribly bad but not a steal by any means. Only problem I did an oil analysis as it appeared that the fluids have not been changed in a long while. I was worried the Tranny and motor might have problems because the tranny fluid was pretty thick and old looking and the oil was pretty black so I sent off samples. I ran the machine pretty hard for 20 minutes then I took the oil samples by pulling the filters off wiping them of good and dumping oil from the filters into canisters for the oil lab. I got the results back and I have no clue on how to read them and the lab cannot tell me levels that are typically good, bad, worn, or failure imminent. So does anyone have opinions. I have read numbers all over the place and I realize I am buying a used machine but Id like to know if this is typically indicative of immediate engine failure within the near future or down the line. Sample Engine OIL Wear Metals IRON - 160 Aluminum - 8 Chrome- 3 Copper - 15 Lead - 59 Tin - 3 Nickel - 5 Cadmium - 0 Silver - 0 titanium - 0 Contaminant Metals Silicon - 8 Sodium- 0 Boron- 6 Potassium - 0 Additive Metals Barium - 0 Calcium - 2668 Magnesium - 76 Molydeum - 48 Phosphorus - 753 Zinc - 807 Viscosity 14.5 Transmission Wear Metals Iron -63 Aluminum - 0 Chrome - 0 Copper - 36 Lead - 0 Tin - 0 Cadmium - 0 Silver-0 nickel-0 Titanium-0 Contaminant Metals Silicon-4 sodium-2 boron-9 potassium-0 Additive metals Barium-0 Calcium-2225 Magnesium-14 molybdenum-2 phosphorus- 800 zinc-880 Viscosity 8.0
As has been explained many times before in similar questions on the forum, one lone oil sample is of limited usefulness. At least two samples are required to try to establish a trend. However If we were taking your analysis at face value then 160ppm iron is very high for an engine and would be cause for concern. BUT. Your sampling technique has pretty much made all your efforts useless, I'm afraid. Taking a sample from the filter is a big no-no as that is where all the contaminants will collect and are bound to skew your results upwards. Well done for explaining straight up what you did though. It's made giving you an accurate answer much easier. Incidentally, despite the sampling technique, the tranny may not be too bad, but it's impossible to say for sure.
If you re-sample the fluids, take them from the sump drain after the machine has been warmed up to operating temp. Remove the plug and let about a quart drain out before sticking your collection bottle into the ****** of oil. The lab you used should have asked what the equipment is and the time on oil and machine. Without knowing that information, the lab can not give you any recommendations. JT
Agree with the above. Without knowing if the oil has 5 hours or 500 hours the results are of little use! I personally prefer samples taken from a fitting in an oil galley that uses a probe like the needle used to inflate a soccer/football. Not sure if this will come through readable but here is a partial page out of an oil sample report on a KT19 in a Komatsu loader with over 25,000 hours on it: If you can read the hours it gets for a year it is now just a spare machine at the quarry my guess is the "iron" may be running a little high just from lack of use letting a touch of rust build up in the cylinders, plus this engine has never had any major work done short of a valve job due to a broken valve spring back in about 2013. Don't take this to say your engine is junk as your sample method might have been the cause of the high iron reading.
I agree with CM & ksh. A single sample can't really give you much in the way of meaningful information, it's trends over time that you are looking for. Regarding the engine apart from the 160ppm of iron which others have already commented on I would personally be horrified at an engine with 5ppm of lead, let alone 59ppm. Lead comes from the overlay of the crank and camshaft bearings among others. However because of the way the sample was taken it's hard to give the numbers too much credibility because of the concentration of contaminants that would naturally occur in a filter housing.
That's what I've always done, or let half the oil drain, then take the sample from the streem. The oil test places say that's wrong, use a suction gun or oil sample port in the pressure system, only.
I bought a truck and had a sample done just to see if there was antifreeze or diesel or anything out of the ordinary with the engine. I had no idea how many hours were on the oil the oil but I guessed close to 300 because they had written the hours on the filter and there is an hour meter that appears to work. I don't know what brand of oil either but on the top of the report they have a color code listing lower critical, lower reportable, upper critical and upper reportable. Thankfully everything was with in normal range with no oddities. There is a wear control chart at the bottom that goes from 0-150 and they listed it at 18. Not sure what this means? They could update the report if I knew what brand of oil it was.
Taking it mid "streem" should give an accurate sample of what's going through the system you would think.