High aluminum in oil analysis

Brass is 60-95% copper, depending on the type of alloy. I believe spectrometers are not able to differentiate between alloys, they just provide information in terms of pure elements, like the ones you would find in a periodic table.

Loki said:

If the turbo bearings are made from a copper alloy then an increase in copper might suggest you remove the intake plumbing and check the turbo for bearing play. I just requested a sample kit and will start tracking this data for my car.

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A normal new car buyer should not have to do this!

VeeDubTDI said:

I always thought they were made of brass. I could be wrong about that.

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Here is what the manufacturer of the passat turbo has to say about the bearing system design:
http://www.3k-warner.de/en/products/turbochargerBearingSystem.aspx
bob.

MichaelB said:

A normal new car buyer should not have to do this!

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A normal car buyer has never even heard of this. They would look at you like you had a pecker sticking out of your forehead if you mentioned oil analysis.

PassatSE4me said:

A normal car buyer has never even heard of this. They would look at you like you had a pecker sticking out of your forehead if you mentioned oil analysis.

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Well that statement helped a lot Have a nice day...........hope you do not have a pecker stickin' out of your forehead.

Thanks for the link, Bob!

Well my most recent sample with 5,000 miles on the oil and 15,000 on the car showed aluminum at 49. Previous samples were 40 at 10,000 miles and 30 at 5,000 miles. All other metals are under the average for CR TDI's with the exception of copper which has been hovering around 11 (the avg. is 8).

Uh-oh... I see a trend. Time to ditch the car.

I wish some of the people with higher mileage on their Passat's would get their oil tested. I would like to know whether the Aluminum continues to go up or if it flattens out or drops. What will the oil look like at 80,000 or 100,000 miles on the car?

I still think there may be sources of Al that are not necessarily the engine eating itself. Things like charge air cooler, and egr bringing Al from things like DPF or other exhaust system components. The lab I use for work (Caterpillar) told me that oxides of metal show up in the numbers just as reduced (metallic) wear products.

These analyses must be taken with a grain of salt....

mountain-valleymotors said:

I wish some of the people with higher mileage on their Passat's would get their oil tested. I would like to know whether the Aluminum continues to go up or if it flattens out or drops. What will the oil look like at 80,000 or 100,000 miles on the car?

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Check out my 70K mile UOA in post #36:
http://forums.tdiclub.com/showpost.php?p=4452124&postcount=36
My numbers were quite a bit higher but seem to be coming down now. Should be ready for an 80K sample next month.
bob.

This is the first UOA I have ever done. I am concerned about wear of the brass bearings in the turbo and expect that wear will show up as high copper levels. I don't put a lot of miles on this car and have intentions of keeping it for at least 15 years, but because of the significant number of turbo failures on this model I may reconsider my commitment to this car. If the copper level was predictive of turbo failure then I might know if or when I should start worrying. I will be taking another sample from this same oil in a few months. My thought is that once bearing wear gets started it will proceed rapidly and show up as very high copper levels.

I am posting this in two threads, the the oil analysis discussion in the 2012+ passat section and in the fuels and lubricants sections.

Has anyone had turbo failure and a UOA history that might support this theory.

This was factory fill? WAY too early to worry about anything yet if so.

You'll put yourself in an insane asylum worrying about factory fill UOA.

Way too early to make any sort of assumption or conclusion. Keep this in your records, but don't make any decisions based on it.

Keep in mind that Blackstone's "universal averages" are NOT for the Passat engine. They are working on separating out the Passat from the rest of the 2.0 commonrail TDIs.

So far your numbers look like the rest that I have seen, but again, that doesn't mean anything because you only have 3500 miles on the factory oil.

I can't seem to figure out how to get the pdf to show up in the body of the post. If somebody could give me some pointers I will try.

But read what Blackstone said on my latest report. They wonder if I am off to the races. I wonder who I should call to answer their question? haha.

But it is a little troubling the trend that I am seeing here. On the other hand it does seem like they may have separated out the CKRA Passats now. The universal averages for aluminum were about 20 when they were including all the Common Rail TDI's. Now it is at 39.

All the rest of my numbers look really good except for the Aluminum. I can't hardly imagine that this is from piston wear like they say. I would think some other metals would come along with that.

You can't post a PDF, but you could save it as an image and post that. It works fine when I click on the link, so I wouldn't worry about it.

They seem very concerned about wear, but at what point does cumulative wear cause problems? Is it possible that the engine could run for a few hundred thousand miles with this rate of wear? That is what remains to be seen.

VeeDubTDI said:

You can't post a PDF, but you could save it as an image and post that. It works fine when I click on the link, so I wouldn't worry about it.

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Thanks. I will have to figure out how to do that next time.

VeeDubTDI said:

They seem very concerned about wear, but at what point does cumulative wear cause problems? Is it possible that the engine could run for a few hundred thousand miles with this rate of wear? That is what remains to be seen.

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I guess it all depends on what part (or parts) is wearing. But my gut feeling is that this isn't a wear issue.

VeeDubTDI said:

So far your numbers look like the rest that I have seen, but again, that doesn't mean anything because you only have 3500 miles on the factory oil.

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If VW say's change the oil every 10,000 miles what's the reason for doing it early?

mountain-valleymotors said:

I guess it all depends on what part (or parts) is wearing. But my gut feeling is that this isn't a wear issue.

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What is your gut feeling ? On another note. I tried top tec 4200 for one oci and had minor cunsumption issues which I never had before.

My gut feeling is that the aluminum is coming from the EGR/DPF system. One way to tell would be to do an oil analysis on a car immediately before and after doing a delete. Once my car gets some more miles on it (Closer to edge of warranty) I will probably do this. Then we will know.

My reasoning is this: 1. If there was aluminum wear, wouldn't I be seeing some other metals increasing as well? There are almost no pure aluminum parts in these engines. They should be mostly alloys of some sort. 2. The other Common Rail TDI's do not seem to have this issue and one of the significant differences between the other CR engines and the Passat is the emissions system. The other big differences are the intercooler/turbo setup and the style of injector. All of these big differences are mostly external. I am sure there are some internal differences as well, but I think the CKRA and other CR engines are mechanically similar in design and materials.

Here is my 20K sample, I didn't sample the factory fill. I think mine is the highest posted yet!

I concur with Blackstone's analysis. If this is a 20K sample, I think it's too early to draw any conclusions.

High aluminum seems to be pretty common in the Passats, so far with no adverse effects. I guess time will tell!

I just sent blackstone a sample of oil from my highly abused air cooled dirt bike where it got so hot it would stall when the clutch was pulled in, 20 hours of 11,000 RPM use should prove interesting!

Another UOA with high Aluminum. 30k on engine, 10k on oil. Sampled with a pump.

Maybe it's a timing chain tensioner problem! Really, Blackstone?

I would love to see the universal averages for the CKRA engine, not the 2.0 commonrail diesel in general. The CKRA has a different EGR setup which has been speculated to be the cause of the high aluminum.