Oil Tester

I get a Bimonthly farm paper called Farm Show, and they ran an article about the Lubricheck oil analyzer. I did a little research and found this article, but was wondering what yall thought about it. I'm not so sure a $50 tool is good enough to base oil change decisions on, but according to this guy it is just as accurate as the commercial testers. maybe it would work as kind of a baseline tho, sort of know a little closer when to send in an oil sample?


[h=1]Lubricheck Engine Oil Analyzer.[/h] Written: Mar 20 '13 (Updated Mar 20 '13)

Pros:Inexpensive, Accurate, A real time and money saver. Cons:China! Come on guys!The Bottom Linero's will love this portable unit. Novices will too if they can come to grips. I'm only giving it a four star for the China build.

When oil testing came about a few years back I was a skeptic. I admit it. I was old school. Change that oil every three to five thousand miles. Clean oil keeps the engine clean and well lubricated. When my boss came down and said no more wasting oil, that we would do oil testing and he was going to invest thousands of dollars in the equipment. Well, needless to say I raised a stink, but went on to comply. This was a good sized fleet operation and we tracked vehicles every breakdown, preventive maintenance schedule and service life. Running the oil as long as we could through the use of oil testing and analysis did not seem to pose any problems with the vehicles longevity whether they were gasoline or diesel powered. I soon started using the shop tester to max out my own vehicles engine oil.

Fast forward a few years. Now teaching automotive technology, I like to stay at the cutting edge of what’s going on. Although I have been talking about oil testing to my students, I have not been able to show them. The school is not going to put down thousands of dollars to do a few oil sample tests a year. Then along comes Wave on technologies with their Lubricheck portable tester. I first found about this tester in Professional Tools and Equipment News magazine about a year ago. I was shocked. Forty dollars for an oil analysis tester… NO WAY! I put my name on the waiting list as they had not been released yet and waited. Finally I got the word, ready to ship, I sent my forty dollars and it came a couple weeks later in the mail. I couldn’t believe it. It came in an envelope.

Opening the Lubricheck unit I found a card sized device inside. Packing material and instructions included. The back of the tester even slides off and turns around to protect the face, sort of like a small pocket calculator. Four buttons on the face, 1. Flashlight (Really?), 2. A Gasoline/Diesel engine selector, 3. On Off switch, 4. The test button. On the lower half of the case is the oil test sensor with a dish around it. Surrounded by that are the ten “condition” level LED’s that tell you the status of your oil.

My previous experience with electronic oil analyzers was with large ten pound half suitcase sized monsters that big fleets could afford to invest in. Interestingly they used an identical style sensor pad. They also use similar readouts to the Lubricheck unit. To believe that this was going to work had me a bit on edge. But I followed the instructions (very easy: turn it on, select gas/diesel, put a couple drops of oil on sensor from dipstick, press test) and tested my first sample. Nothing! Then another and another and so on. I was ready to throw it out and cut my losses. Instead I contacted the company and said hay, what’s up with this? I got an immediate response that went something like this.

“These first pieces we shipped didn’t include in the instructions the need to wait about 15 seconds for a result. Try it one more time and if it fails let us know”

So I went back and counted backwards from 15, and just as they said. At about 2 I got a reading. My heart jumped right into my throat.

I’ve been testing oil like a mad man since. My students love it, my student’s parents, my co workers and so on. This is an amazing device at an amazing price. So why do I like it so much? Well first off I can maximize the use of my motor oil. That’s a money saver as I change it a whole lot less often now. That’s time saved as well. Of course the greenies probably love that I’m dumping less oil out in the grass or down the drain (have a sense of humor guys) which is good for the environment. At the cost of oil, and for as many vehicles as I have to take care of, this has already paid for itself.

I hesitated on my review of the Lubricheck as to my dismay, although it is an American company, it has made in China stamped onto it. That right there scares me, so I figured I better use it for awhile before giving a thumbs up. I’m not keen on made in China and even if the price was doubled on this and it said made in USA, it would be more than worth the extra money spent. Come on Lubricheck, don’t support Commies! You could have even gone to India and had this made. Anyway aside from that thorn in paradise, this is a powerful little tester. I was going to add a bunch of technical spec stuff and how it works to this, but you can access all that info right on Lubricheck’s web site, so it would be too much redundancy.

I think the clincher on the accuracy of this device was following my wife’s car and its maintenance schedule. She drives a VW 2.0 Diesel that advises a 10,000 mile oil change interval. As it was nearing that 10Kmark, I followed along with the Lubricheck, and sure enough just before it reached the indicated mileage, the Lubricheck indicated a reading of 9. That put it right in the change it range. I had foresight enough to be double checking some of my vehicles against a commercial analysis tester and the results were close enough to not even need to call it a standard deviation. So the accuracy is there. I think convincing those that are “doing what Dad told me” will be the toughest sale. These guys are running on emotion. Pure science tells us that oil analysis does work and my own experience as a fleet manager also tells me that it’s a valid maintenance practice. From what I’m seeing of the Lubricheck, it is accurate and reliable. So for those that use sense over sensitivity, this is a must buy tool.

Quick rundown.

For the professional technician. No more taking the oil to the tester. The tester will go to the oil.
Cheap enough that every tech can keep one at hand
Accuracy on par with the commercial machines, although it takes longer to read out


For the Novice. Priced right and easy to use.
Like anything else it has a learning curve. You must be able to spot outside problems that can throw a reading off. I.E... contaminates on the dipstick that aren’t coming from the base, but poor methods. Water from condensation. Are you putting on enough miles to expel it to begin with? And so on.

May have to get by emotional barriers, Dad’s advice, Jiffy Lube mans hard sell, and trust in science.

In the end could save you a bundle.

Recommended: Yes


Nearly two years later, we get our hands on Lubricheck's "blood tester"


In May of 2011, we ran a story about a small company seeking backers for an innovative do-it-yourself device engineered to measure the level of contaminants in a vehicle's motor oil. Armed with the knowledge, consumers could extend oil change intervals, save money and help the environment. Things apparently went well for the startup, as its Lubricheck hit the market this year and it wasn't long before a sample landed in our hands.

About 25 percent smaller than an iPhone, the self-contained plastic tester has a small recessed button on its lower face that serves as a tray to receive a few drops of used oil – we used the dipstick. Sensors measure the capacitive and resistive properties of the oil (the lubricant degrades with use and the changes cause a variance in capacitive and resistive properties) and then score the fluid with a number between 1-10, indicated with an illuminated LED. Oil with a low score is still good, but oil with a high score is contaminated and needs replacing.

In practice, the Lubricheck ($39.95) seemed to work as well as promised. We tested a handful of cars, a lawnmower and a pressure washer, and the scores all appeared to be spot-on with the known life of the oil. We liked the size of the device, how simple it was to execute the test and how quickly the results appeared (less than a minute). Our only complaint was that the user needs to be careful to not drip oil into the unprotected slide switches - easier said than done when shaking oil off a thin metal rod (we accidentally got oil in the ON/OFF switch, but apparently to no ill effect).

Overall, the little plastic device impressed us, and it appears to provide consumers the information they need to extend oil change intervals. Of course Lubricheck isn't as accurate as spectroscopy, flash point, viscosity and chemical-based oil testing – we will still mail samples to Blackstone Labs for that.




Posted 22nd March 2013 by Captain on GREY GOOSE
http://2knowabout.blogspot.com/2013/03/lubricheck-engine-oil-analyzer-more.html

 

Something else I found someone emailed lubricheck about a test unit...

more info received in response to my request to test Lubricheck:

===
To: Jon Slider
Sent: Friday, February 13, 2015 8:22 AM
Subject: Re: test volunteer

Jonathan,

Thanks for offering your testing services! We have sent dozens of samples in to Blackstone for analysis for our own research purposes. The results have been very helpful to us. It was Blackstone data on very well worn oil that helped us establish the calibration standards we use on all of our units. As you may know, oil labs run several sophisticated tests, including gas chromatography to identify most of the material found in your oil sample.

The Lubricheck measures the dielectric constant of the oil sample The dielectric constant is a value that has been used in the industrial world for decades to determine even small changes in a lubricant's conductivity and is considered an integral part of transformer oil condition testing.
Consequently, Lubricheck results are hard to directly compare to a full lab analysis. Lubricheck is not an analytical instrument, and can not give you specific reasons why your oil registers a particular level on the Lubricheck. It is designed to provide a composite rating of your oil by primarily reacting to dirt, carbon, metals, water, coolant and acid. It is not capable of detecting any specific contamination. The value of Blackstone and other oil labs is to give you specifics about your oil, often including an informed opinion of their findings from a lab staff member.

But the Lubricheck is great in helping you determine if you have a problem that bears further investigation. For example, you may have just changed your oil 100 miles ago, and Lubricheck gives you a #10 rating. Such a reading may be due to a leaking water pump or gasket leak, or simply 'winter water' building up in your engine due to prolonged idling in very cold weather, etc. In this case, further inspection of the engine, or sending in a sample for analysis may be wise.

On the other hand, if you test your oil with Lubricheck regularly, and find your Lubricheck rating rising steadily until after 12,000 miles, when the Lubricheck gives you a #10, there would be no cause for panic. It should be obvious that you simply should have changed your oil before it hit #10.

So, given the complexity of making direct comparisons between Lubricheck and lab test results, we must respectfully decline your request for a test unit. But other customers have made this comparison, and like us, have found the lab results consistent with Lubricheck. Here is a link to a Porsche owner that started as a skeptic, but was 'won over'. http://rennlist.com/forums/911-forum/793781-lubricheck-received-for-chirstmas.html

Here is a statement from Matt Spurlock, an oil analysis expert that recently endorsed the Lubricheck and wrote this statement for our use after using the Lubricheck in factory maintenance training.

Lubricheck Engine Oil Tester Lives up to it's Name-

The Lubricheck oil tester relies on comparing the dielectric constant to that of a new engine oil. The dielectric constant is a value that has been used in the industrial world for decades to determine even small changes in a lubricant's conductivity and is considered an integral part of transformer oil condition testing.

When used to monitor engine oils, the dielectric value is particularly sensitive to the unique conditions posed on an oil by any engine, gas or diesel. Changes in the lubricant that might affect the dielectric value include- oil oxidation (lubricant degradation), moisture contamination, glycol contamination, fuel contamination, and wear debris from pistons, rings, and bearings.

The Lubricheck is by far the most cost effective tool on the market today to determine if an engine oil is still suitable for use. The ease of testing and overall accuracy of the unit is something that even the novice automobile owner can wrap their hand around."

Matt Spurlock, CLS, CMRP, CRL

Sorry to be so long winded, but we here at WaveOn Tech get a bit passionate about dirty oil and saving the World!

Warmest regards,

Chad Erickson, CEO
WaveOn Tech

 

if it will work and be anything even close to accurate it would be money well spent I believe