Waste Motor Oil for Motor Oil

[dougyes]

While people are figuring out how to use waste oil for diesel fuel, it's easy to use waste motor oil for motor oil. Just filter the heck out of it. A bypass filter (I use http://www.gulfcoastfilters.com/) will keep your oil good for many many miles. A regular oil test will keep you on the safe side. I had a small one from Frantz on our Dodge van for many years and I installed the Gulf Coast on a 3126 Cat 6 years ago. These units filter finer particles than the OEM filters.
If you want to recycle oil from a reliable outside source, rig up a little cleaning system with a pump, an OEM filter and a Gulf Coast or other brand bypass filter to clean the stuff up before putting it in your motor.

[bobofthenorth]

There's a lot more to clean oil than just filtering out the particulates.  Extended drain intervals with regular sampling - OK - in fact that's exactly what I do on my bus.  Putting somebody else's waste oil in my crankcase - not bloody likely.

[artvonne]

  This airplane buddy out at the airport noted my Ford truck diesel and we got talking. He owned two Lincolns with some BMW diesel, and then complained they wernt any good, had valve trouble around 100K miles, guides were shot.

  One day he saw my Mercedes diesel, we got talking, said he owned a new one once, wasnt impressed, said the valve guides went out before 100K miles....

  He bought a new Ford 1 ton diesel, were drivng it to lunch one day, yakkin away about stuff. Somehow oil came up, how he runs Mobil 1......

  Big Bright light lit over my head, I asked if he was doing the 25 thou oil change thing? "Why Hell yah, Mobil Ones the Best oil you can buy"......

  Having seen first hand, Mercedes diesels with over 700K miles and never the head off, I know they will run the distance if maintained. But running old worn out oil full of acids and crud isnt the way to do it. It can be recycled back into motor oil, but I doubt it can be done at home. You need to cook the crap out of it, probably run it up to 400F and boil it a while. Then you need to put additives back in it, sample it for viscosity, add viscosity improvers, etc., etc.. Seems like poor economy to pour old oil into a $12K engine you wish to leave the state with. Not me.
 

[pvcces]

For what it's worth, we save $100 every time we change our toilet paper filter. It takes about 1/2 hour and it's easy to get oil on my hands if I don't use nitrile gloves.

The gulf coast filter is about the same thing, according to the stuff I have seen. We do get oil analysis reports periodically. When the TBN falls to about half of new oil, we change the oil.

So far, so good.

Tom Caffrey

[JohnEd]

Tom,

That makes so very much sense.  Change it when it needs it.  Early if need be and you save the engine and wait till it is necessary and you save a buck.  I'll bet you run a filter minder as well.

John

[happycamperbrat]

TP filter???

[Chopper Scott]

TP= toilet paper.

[Melbo]

A mechanic told me once that "oil is the cheapest thing you will put in that motor / transmission". Change it once a year miles or not and use good oil. Just check the price of rebuilding / servicing / towing / having a mechanic even THINK about looking at your bus and the oil is pretty cheap.  So once a year I change the oil and filters in the transmission and engine if I drove one or ten thousand miles.

The cost is about 150 dollars or so and I do it myself so it takes a little less than two hours --- I adjust the brakes and lube it up at the same time --- If I can't afford the 20 dollars a month for the annual check up and oil change I gotta find a new hobby.

YMMV

Melbo

[topfrog007]

Just thought I would mention that I've been told you cannot re-use synthetic oil. It breaks down on a molecular level and cannot be filtered and removed. No idea if that's true or not...

Some of the military vehicles (like the duece and a half) have multifuel engines and can run on used motor oil, diesel, unleaded, kerosene, vegetable oil and more!

[luvrbus]

The military Continental multi fuel diesel engine will last between 7,000 to 10,000 also they don't have a long life and no power on anything but diesel and you need a truck load of injection pumps for 10,000 miles

good luck

[JohnEd]

Melbo,

You have a solid and time proven procedure there.  Hit the miles limit or the one year mark and change.  The only problem is in the "reason" those rules were put together in the first place and that is to insure good oil condition.  The oil condition is projected to deteriorate after so much use or the passage of so much time.  That is all a projection or estimate for the average use or the average time or the average conditions and is estimated to protect almost all engines to the max.  If you can determine the actual condition f the oil then you can change your oil when it actually "needs" to be changed.   When those change rules were made the lab testing of oil wasn't a service that was available to the common driver. It is, today, available to us all but few use it that aren't commercial or savvy.  Consequently, the advice to the public is to change at intervals....blindly.  That works very well to protect the engine and is even wise.

There is a problem with that scheduled oil change program but I think, while not remote, it is unlikely that it will cause you trouble.  If the "premium" or "good quality" of oil isn't up to the job, your engine suffers while you remain blissfully ignorant.  If you get bad fuel that is high in sulfur your additives that affect the TBN get exhausted at an accelerated rate and engine wear is, commensurately, accelerated beyond the acceptable limits.  If conditions are more severe, your change interval should be shortened and the key question here should be by "how much".   Use, for me, is a confusion, but might relate to driving habits more that load as lugging a 2 stroke is certain premature death regardless.  It follows that "a little lugging"  might tax everything but I do know that excessive heat associated with hard pull like use or lugging exhausts the oil additives early.  Engine condition might dictate that more frequent changes are warranted.  Certainly, high silicates, indicating dirt is being sucked into the engine, should require oil changing as a crisis priority.  Soot, carbon introduce through the fuel combustion process, thickens the oil to such a degree that the oil cannot "get around" fast enuf to lubricate the innards and sooting goes along with use.

Changing for TBN is misleading as TOM has stated it is misleading, I think.  His periodic tests evaluate soot and "dirt" and TBN and a whole slew of other important data.  TBN, while a superb indicator, isn't the only factor driving oil change intervals.  Tom, addresses the other....soot.  He removes that using TP filters, AKA, Franz Oil Filters.  Almost any qualified mech or knowledgeable individual will tell you point blank and without blinking....."NEVER use any filter that involves TP, NEVER".  They are correct.  Most people screw up, eventually, and allow TP particles to enter the oil and those serve to clog the system.  Also, TP filters at a sub-micron level and clogs sooner than a conventional filter element filtering down to the 20 micron level.  So TP is bad IF used carelessly or used instead of a conventional high quality oil filter.  TP filter do remove soot that conventional oil filters are designed, intentionally, to pass, and serve to maintain the thickness or "weight" of oil.  The oil analysis lists the current weight of oil and while you may have poured 40Wt into her at the change interval, you may drain 50 or 60 Wt after the oil is exhausted.  Toms oil, without serious soot, will drain at the Wt he starts out with and,  from the standpoint of Wt, be just as effective as it was starting out.

TBN is a measure of the oils ability to neutralize the acids associated with combustion.  You can't rejuvenate them by adding more additives, realistically.  Once the original load is used up it means that the neutralized acids are left in solution and they are bad for stuff all by themselves.  So, once the TBN falls, your oil has reached the end of its lifespan.  There is a "fix" of sorts and that is to change HALF the oil....if soot isn't a problem.  That will bring your TBN up up acceptable limits.  I don't think that is valid for us.  Tom has set his limit at 50% of the additives remaining and that translates to excellent wear protection throughout the life span of the engine.  Yeah, TOM!

Changing you oil when it needs to be changed will reduce consumption and serve to more fully guarantee our oil is usable.  The GREEN angle is just a plus.  Smart on both counts.

Now.....how often do we have the analysis done....miles...time???  Don, Clifford, BK anybody.

To repeat myself....YEAH, TOM!  and thanks

John

[artvonne]

  I once had a 1977 Mercedes 300 5 cyl diesel. The strangest thing, it wouldnt use a drop of oil (stayed at the full level) for 2000 miles. Then, within the next 500 miles it would burn a quart. Change it with fresh, it would go 2K then drop a quart every 500.

  Something was shearing the oil, and once sheared it lost viscosity. Permanently. Changing brands didnt change the effect either. There is no way I would want to put permanently damaged (sheared) oil into a perfectly good engine, and a filter aint gonna fix it, its a shear problem not a debris problem.

 

[luvrbus]

Back in the day with all the low ash oil on the market and with the new filter technology DD got suckered into 100,000 mile oil changes by just changing the filter at 25,000 miles needless to say that didn't work out real good for DD LOL after over 7000 engines under warranty, change the oil they still make it is best thing you can do 

good luck

[pvcces]

If anyone is interested, one time I didn't change the toilet paper filter for about 3000 miles; I normally change it at about 1500 miles. When I tried to pull to old filter out of the can, I could hardly get it out. When I did get it out, it was like a brick.

That made me stop and think about how much carbon could be in the oil. The oil analysis recommends changing the oil if soot reaches 6% by weight. A gallon is 128 fluid ounces; seven gallons is 896 ounces. 6% of 896 is 53 3/4 ounces. Do you think that a one quart filter will hold 53 ounces of soot, fluid measure or otherwise? I don't.

Since then, I have made a point to change the filter every 1500 miles, and I haven't had to contend with a solid filter.

No other filter that I have seen seems to filter as fine, so I'm happy with ours.

Tom Caffrey