Is it on the floor or out the exhaust. Oil analysis can help you find the cause of your increased oil consumption, avoid a failure and save money. 
This article will answer the following questions.
- Why is my engine burning oil?
- Why am I needing to top-up my engine oil?
So your oil consumption has increased recently. The obvious first point of call may be to take a look on your drive to see if there is a dirty oil patch building up underneath. But what if there is no leak, why is your engine consuming so much oil? This is where the wonders of oil analysis can help identify the cause of this and many vehicle symptoms.
So why might oil consumption go up. The two most common reasons include:
- Overheating – high temperatures lead to the lightest part of the lubricant boiling off and the oil thickening. You can see this as a viscosity increase in the oil, but also through coolant analysis. Monitoring glycol antifreeze/coolant condition is a great starting point for diagnosing a wealth of cooling system problems. Considering 80% of engine failures are coolant related and 60% of vehicle downtime is coolant related including coolant analysis in your testing regime helps catch the most common issues.
“80% of engine failures are coolant related and 60% of vehicle downtime is coolant related”
- Worn rings – worn rings can lead to oil getting to the top of the upper cylinders where it is burnt. This not only uses lubricant but also forms ash deposits that can block diesel particulate filters and lead to engine deposits. The most common causes of worn rings apart from age are contaminants such as dirt wearing them premeturely. The most common route of dirt into the engine is via air intake faults and can also be picked up by routine oil analysis as Silicon and Aluminium. Wear to the rings can directly be detected by measuring the chromium and molybdenum content of the oil.
Rarer causes such as poor oil quality and even coolant leaks where the pressure of engine oil leads to oil in the coolant and where the coolant in the engine oil from the opposite direction has boiled off.
Hopefully you now see that every day symptoms of vehicles can be diagnosed and resolved early with oil analysis.
To find out about starting your fluid analysis programme and for free advice on how to start feel free to contact us by clicking the blue icon on the bottom right of the screen.