From: Blackstone Labs <newsletter@blackstone-labs.com>
Subject: Oil Analysis newsletter

Welcome to Blackstone Laboratories' newsletter...

The Oil Report!

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Kristin

Also from Blackstone's website:

We have a database of the wear produced from just about all types of
aircraft engines. As an experiment, we compared the wear metals produced in
a Lycoming IO-360 on four types of oils: Aeroshell W100, Aeroshell 15W/50,
Exxon Elite 20W/50, and Phillips 20W/50. The sample group contained 571
IO-360s. Here are the results:
Aluminum wear ranged from 68 ppm, or no significant difference. Chrome
ranged from 46 ppm, or no significant difference. Copper ran from 59 ppm;
again, not much difference. Tin was 1 or 2 ppm for all types. Nickel ran at
2 ppm for all oil types. We found minor variations in iron wear ranging
from 23 to 27 ppm. If you had 4 ppm of any of these metals in your eye, you
would never know it.
But wait! Iron wear tends to increase the longer the oil is in service. So
we ran another column on the spreadsheet, dividing iron wear by average
hours oil use. Once again, we found no significant difference in iron wear.

Our conclusion from this (and other tests we have run using wear data) is,
it does not make any difference brand of oil you use in your aircraft
engine. There may be a correct grade. There is not a correct brand.
There are many variables to consider in how an aircraft engine wears. We
consider the oil type to be the least of these variables (if it has any
significance at all).

Marc Wiese