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If you work in an industrial field, you understand the importance of properly maintaining your equipment. Whether you have a fleet of trucks or heavy equipment on your job site, it’s vital to ensure your engines are functioning efficiently at all times. When you know your engines are free of mechanical issues and contaminants, you can feel confident your equipment will continue delivering reliable performance with every job.

One of the most effective ways to confirm your engines are operating at their best is to schedule oil analyses for your equipment. Testing oil periodically helps identify potential problems at the source and prevent costly issues from occurring before they impact machine functionality and productivity. By detecting an issue early, you can also plan for maintenance instead of dealing with unexpected downtime. Additionally, oil sampling maximizes savings by allowing you to increase and optimize oil change intervals.

Defining Oil Analyses

Oil analysis is a common preventive maintenance process used to procure valuable information regarding your equipment’s operating conditions by analyzing its oil health. These laboratory analyses typically examine three aspects of an engine’s lubricant, including:

• Oil properties, such as the base oil and its additives.
• The presence of common contaminants.
• Signs of machine wear and debris.

Oil analyses are used to identify abnormalities and other signs of bad engine health before they negatively impact a machine or even cause equipment failure. When you test your oil through oil analysis, you can take action and correct potential mechanical issues before they require costly repairs.

How Oil Analyses Work

The process of testing an engine’s lubricant through oil analysis comes with two primary goals—the first is to maximize data volume. When taking an oil sample, it’s essential to ensure you captured as much information per milliliter as possible to guarantee the most accurate results. This information allows you to observe and evaluate components such as oil degradation, cleanliness, additive depletion and the presence of wear particles.

The second objective through oil analysis is to minimize data disturbance. To accomplish this task, the oil sample should be a consistent, representative and uniform concentration of information without contamination. You can ensure minimum disturbance by considering three key parameters:

• Sampling process: An efficient sampling procedure is crucial to the overall success of an oil analysis. For the best method, all participants must follow the same processes and document them accordingly to ensure data consistency and institutionalization.
• Sampling device: When choosing testing hardware, users should acquire the correct bottle type and ensure it’s clean and easy to use as not to disturb the sample quality.
• Sampling location: All sampling locations produce different data, and some machines even require multiple sampling locations to deliver the most comprehensive results.

Determining Your Engine’s Health With Oil Analyses

Oil analysis is essential in determining an engine’s health. When you book scheduled oil sampling services, you can ensure your engine is well-maintained and functioning properly at all times through comprehensive analyses performed by knowledgeable and experienced professionals.

Over time, your engine’s mechanical parts and components release a metal particulate that seeps into your oil. When you take your equipment to a trusted service provider such as Cleveland Brothers, a team of skilled technicians monitor these particle levels to determine engine health. Likewise, these particulates notify a technician of abnormalities you might not otherwise notice. This all contributes to a longer machine expectancy and life. Cleveland Brothers also assesses relevant oil and fluid trends, such as wear metals like iron, copper and aluminum, and harmful contaminants like coolant entry, air, soot, water, fuel and debris.

Analyzing these components will help you gain insights into your engine’s mechanical condition and determine the proper course of action or most effective maintenance schedule. Additional benefits of evaluating engine health through oil analysis include:

• Identifying potential problems before they occur.
• Minimizing downtime.
• Preventing costly repairs.
• Maximizing equipment life.
• Increasing resale value.
• Saving money.

Oil Analyses Results

Analyzing oil sampling results may seem difficult, but Cleveland Brothers is here to make it simple. Checking for these key components and knowing their implications give more insight to engine health:

• Wear metals: There may be a presence of wear metals, such as iron, lead, chrome, aluminum and tin in small amounts. However, high amounts of these particles usually indicate abnormal wear or a corrosion problem.
• Insoluble matter: Insoluables, including dirt, soot and fuel, can give insight into your system’s oil filtration capabilities as well as how fast your oil is oxidizing and collecting contaminants.
• Viscosity: Oil viscosity refers to how easily oil pours under certain temperatures. Increases or decreases in oil viscosity can indicate many issues, from overheating to contamination and sludging.
• Coolants: If your oil contains traces of boron, sodium or potassium, you may be experiencing a coolant leak.

Schedule Your Oil Analysis at Cleveland Brothers Today

Identify and correct bad engine health at the source by scheduling an oil analysis at Cleveland Brothers. We’ve spent over 70 years providing our customers with high-quality products and parts from some of the industry’s leading manufacturers, as well as reliable services from expert technicians. Whether you’re looking for new, used or rental equipment, we carry a dependable and efficient variety suited for applications across numerous major industries.

Fill out an online form or give us a call at 866-551-4602 to schedule an oil analysis at our lab today!

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