Jim Stark | Blackstone Laboratories

About Jim Stark

Jim Stark passed away peacefully at his home in Ossian, Indiana on Nov. 20, 2015. He was 73. Jim was an inventor, entrepreneur, pilot, musician, writer, workshop tinkerer, mechanic, and an all-around interesting guy. He enjoyed happy hour (three-beer limit unless scotch was available), playing guitar and the ukulele, traveling and camping with his wife Kathy, passionately rooting for Purdue, hot tubbing, writing stories, John Prine music, and checking himself out of the hospital. Jim and Kathy played music wherever they went on their travels across the country. Jim founded Blackstone Laboratories back in 1985, a successful company that is still going strong today. He was building his own airplane – a Van’s RV12 – just before he died. Jim survived a tour in Vietnam, crashing an airplane, two heart attacks and two heart surgeries, jumping out of an airplane (barely) when he was 70, and the doctors in Indianapolis before lung cancer got him in the end. His spirit is among the stars, and he will be greatly missed by all who loved him.

Insolubles in Aircraft Oil

Once upon a time I lived in primitive conditions as a soldier in a war zone. We had few amenities, eating our three daily meals from a can. The morning coffee routine wasn’t very refined, either. The cooks worked in a tent. They heated water for coffee in large 15-gallon pans over a gasoline-fired stove. To make coffee they simply dumped tins of ground coffee beans into the boiling water, and after it steeped for a while, the water turned brown. When it appeared to be the right color, the heat was turned down and the churning grounds—at least most of them—settled to the bottom. If you were early when you passed through the chow line, you got a top-of-the-brew serving that wasn’t bad. If you were late and your cuppa joe came from somewhere near the bottom, you could chew it.

We enjoyed the coffee grounds in our coffee as much as your engine enjoys insoluble materials in its oil. These days, there’s usually only one reason I find grounds in my coffee: the coffee filter failed for one reason or another. Usually, one or more of the filter pleats has laid down, letting grounds overflow the rim. But the insolubles in your aircraft’s oil are not quite as simple as the grounds in my Mr. Coffee machine. There are many reasons that insolubles form in an aircraft oil sample.

What are insolubles?

Insolubles are the total solids we find in an oil sample. Insolubles are often caused by oxidation, which is a natural process that occurs when oil is exposed to heat or oxygen (in the air). Oxidation leaves free carbon in the oil when the oxygen molecules combine with hydrogen.

Virgin oil usually doesn’t have any insoluble materials in it. When it occasionally does, the most we normally find is a trace level. The insolubles in virgin oil are from the normal oxidation process of the oil.

At least some of the insolubles in the oil samples we analyze are free carbon particles, which are hard particles that can damage sensitive, close tolerance parts like friction bearings. Keeping insolubles within the normal range is important to most aircraft engine operators wishing to get the longest life possible from their engines.

Measuring insolubles

There are various methods of measuring insolubles in the oil. One is to draw the oil through a very fine filter (½ micron) and then weigh the filter. The filter’s weight gain is reported as a percentage of insoluble materials by weight, compared to the weight of the sample that was drawn through the filter. Another measuring method rates the darkness of the filter patch compared to a standard.

The insolubles test we use at Blackstone is a centrifuge method. A measured volume of oil is mixed with a heated solvent, agitated, and spun at high speed. Insoluble materials collect at the bottom of a tapered glass tube and can then be measured as a percentage of the sample by volume.

We like to see insolubles in piston aircraft engines at or below 0.5 or 0.6% of the sample, depending on the type of engine. Some engines run cleaner than others, so the acceptable range can vary.

As engines age, insolubles in the oil tend to increase. You may think, judging from the gray appearance of used aircraft engine oils, that the insoluble level would be quite high. Actually, the grayness of these samples is from lead in the oil, which easily falls out of suspension in the oil and forms insolubles. Blow-by, fuel system problems, and combustion problems will cause the oil to be black rather than gray. If you observe black oil when you collect the sample, you may have a problem that needs investigating.

Why do I have high insolubles?

The insolubles test is a good measure of how fast the oil is oxidizing and receiving contaminants from blow-by or other engine systems, and how effectively the system’s oil filtration is functioning. Any contaminant in the oil will accelerate its tendency to oxidize, so the insolubles test is a good crosscheck when we suspect a contaminant like gas, moisture, or excessive blow-by. Excessive metals in an oil will also increase the oxidation process. So will frequent and/or extreme heat cycles.

If we found high insolubles but no contamination from fuel or blow-by in your oil, and your oil change intervals are normal, we might mention a problem at oil filtration as a possible cause of the insolubles. The oil filter bypass valve may relieve if the filter was becoming restricted. The filter system bypass could also open upon cold starts when the oil is too thick to pass through the filter media, which may be partially restricted. Once the bypass relieves, the filter is effectively out of the system. Insolubles may also be forming because your oil use interval is too long, and the filter can’t keep up.

Insolubles are just one of the tests we provide to determine the condition of your piston aircraft engines and used oils. It’s an important test that helps us gauge the condition of your oil and engine, and helps keep you flying happily for many hours to come!

By Jim Stark|2024-09-18T14:05:35-04:00July 18, 2023|Aircraft, Articles|Comments Off

Building an RV-12 (Part 1)

Like probably most of you, I read aviation magazines, including Sport Aviation, the EAA’s contribution to general aviation flying. In the 30 years since I first subscribed, I have read countless stories about building airplanes. After all those years the stories run together in a blurred line but a few oft-repeated ideas stand out. They don’t say much about what it is like to spend a couple or possibly a dozen years of your life trying to assemble something that may fly. You pick up instead the thought that if you want to finish the job you’d better do something on the airplane every day.

I’m retired. I have time on my hands. I’ve gotten much like the guys who write about building airplanes. I’m getting long in the tooth. We live on a farm property built more than 100 years ago and there is always work to do on the property. But after living here seven years, a lot of the essential stuff has been done. I talked with my wife Kathy about building the airplane, mentioning the time element — maybe 700-900 hours, as suggested by the kit manufacturer.

Turns out those hours were for someone else. Me? I’m a slow guy. I can’t predict how long something is going to take until I do it. So neither Kathy nor I suspected that nearly two years from the time I picked up the first kit, I would still be lingering on the wings with the third kit waiting on me to open and inventory. I’m looking forward to that third kit. It is the part of the airplane with seats you can sit in and make airplane noises. It is also the part that the wings slide into and the rear fuselage rivets to, which will surely make the project look more like what I tell people it is.

The tools of the trade

I started out in the basement doing the most elemental work while remembering the tools of the trade I once worked with as an aspiring aviation mechanic. That was in school, not the real world. In the real world I didn’t remember as much as I thought. Thank goodness there is no welding or much fabrication with this kit. Van’s, the manufacturer, suggests they supply everything but the engine fluids and paint. I’ll take a minor exception to that. There is some fabrication.

There are a lot of tools required, few of them I already had. I bought tools piecemeal, suffering the waiting time for each to arrive, and then about halfway to where I am now, I read where Aviation Tool Company had a complete set of tools you will need at about half the cost I probably paid buying them one at a time. And yes, you really do need the exact tools Van’s recommends, not some dusty, rusty tool you have stored under your bench. I speak from experience: you can only fool yourself on this type of project.

Mistakes will be made

Van’s does an amazing job with their kits. They are exact. All the holes line up, even across the kits. The instructions are good, precise, and accurate. Written by engineers, you really need to pay attention to what is stated. Miss something and you will be rebuilding.

This attention to detail is not a natural thing. We tend to gloss over things, thinking we know what is being said and then moving on. But that won’t work for you on a Van’s kit. Read it. Read it. And read it again. Repeat as many times as necessary to fully understand what is being said. You will make mistakes¾everyone does. So I suppose there are no perfect airplanes. Maybe I should say there are no perfect homebuilt airplanes. It is up to the builder to decide if an error weakens the airframe. Being trained as an A&P mechanic, I think I have a fairly good feel for making that determination. Up to now any errors have been correctable and I’m confident when I test fly it there will be no problems.

I made a mistake on the vertical stabilizer, the first large piece I assembled. The last step to that part is bolting on the rudder hinges. The bolts suggested for the job would not go into the locking nut-plate holes I had riveted on the inside of the spar. I could not believe it. I called Van’s. The guy I talked with led me to understand the error, which was going to require drilling out a bunch of rivets to get down to the spar, drilling out the countersunk 3/32” rivets and riveting the right nutplates to the spar. No harm done, but it cost me a few days’ work.

So I’ve had to back up a few times but I’ve learned to read these plans better. I think harder on things before proceeding. A friend said he needed to build an airplane so he had a place to focus his thoughts. That’s a good description of what the building is like. It gets intense. Time flies.

You need space

When I started the wings I had to move out to the garage. They run about 15 feet, though nearly 4 feet of the inboard spars overlap in the cockpit behind the seats. There wasn’t enough room in my short-guys basement to get the wings built. It was fall when the wings arrived, so I was thinking about winter. I have a fine garage, but no one ever thought about heating it so far as I can determine.

I spent October insulating and installing heat in the garage. Even with that, the warmth is minimal. When it really gets cold, down around 10 degrees F, I have to find something else to do. I can’t tell you how many times my airplane building has been interrupted. I only thought I could build an airplane without a bunch of additional work to provide a good workspace (first the basement, then the garage).

All in all I’m happy with what I’ve put together so far. The RV-12 looks like a small Cherokee, though two seats instead of four. The wings are about the same, using the Hershey Bar design. This airplane is light, maybe 800 pounds including the engine, which may go more than 300 pounds. It’s stick-flown so I would expect it to be twitchy, especially in pitch. But Van’s says no. It is sensitive, maybe, but not twitchy. I’m looking forward to finding out. Maybe by next summer I will get this airplane built.

By Jim Stark|2024-09-18T14:13:13-04:00July 18, 2023|Aircraft, Articles|Comments Off

Tales From the Oily Side

My business card says “Founder.” It’s not a title, but more of a boast, an inside joke. I’ve had all the titles a man could want and as I settle into the long, hopefully comfortable ride toward the end of this long, challenging and exciting life, the word Founder on my business card describes the business activity I am most proud of.

Is this a great country or what? Where else can a guy start with nothing and create something? There isn’t any paved, well-lighted path to business creation, but there are no barriers to prevent anyone from doing it either. This is a story about creating a business. It would have been helpful to be a genius, or rich, or to have powerful backing. I didn’t have any of those things but I still managed to get the job done. I can attest to surviving many great risks and difficulties in the past two decades, and we’re still standing, hale and hardy. Part of the reason we survived was just luck. Part of it was having a good idea. Part of it was refusing to quit when any reasonable man would have. All of it was a hoot! I’m the Founder. I started it. I believe in it.

The beginning of Blackstone

In the beginning I was sitting in a lawyer’s office in August 1985, incorporating Blackstone Laboratories. My wife was a full-time student at a private college and worked part time. We had some residual savings and stocks from past jobs, but after a month and a half of no employment, I was essentially broke. I was starting a laboratory business that I knew would be capital-intensive, with no capital. I had no clientele, no reputation as a businessman, and no place to open the doors. I was as alone as a guy could be and needed a lot of luck.

A lot of luck was awaiting me. Without it I would just have been another hapless hopeful with his shirttail hanging out, having lost his house, and returning to the dismal task of finding a real job in the world of work.

Incorporating Blackstone Laboratories was probably the most outrageous thing I have intentionally done. It made perfectly good sense to me and no sense to anyone else. My idea was to take oil analysis out of the full-service petroleum laboratory business and, concentrating solely on that one function, do it better, faster, and cheaper than anyone else. Ray Krok did it with the hamburger when he created McDonald’s. I wanted to do the same with oil analysis.

There are (I now realize) some obvious differences between Ray Krok’s idea and mine. When he started McDonald’s, Krok was already a successful businessman and had money and influential friends. His market was everyone who liked hamburgers, which includes nearly everyone on the planet. Even with all of this going for him, his journey into new business creation was not an easy one. Bankers, for instance, were reluctant to loan him money. At that time, there was no business category for “fast food.” To them, Krok was a restaurateur, but didn’t fit the mold for that type of business. They say there was a time that you could have bought half interest in McDonald’s for $50,000.

Good fortune

I could not have survived my early beginnings with Blackstone Laboratories without good fortune smiling on me. Early on, I was sitting in my back yard working on my business plan when who should mosey down my driveway, but my long-lost brother from Wyoming. “Hey, what’s up?” he asked. Bob was a graduate engineer beating the bushes for a new job, having recently been separated from a nice income by a West Coast power company. He pulled up a lawn chair. Sitting there beneath a maple tree on a fine, late summer afternoon, I outlined my plan for conquering the world with a better, faster, cheaper oil analysis program. He was off to Louisiana for a job interview and was thinking about visiting Alaska after that for the same reason. His parting words, as he made the trip back up the driveway was, “If you get the money, let me know. I might want to throw in with you.”

If Ray Krok had trouble with bankers, you can imagine the uphill battle I was facing. Bankers at least knew what hamburgers were. “Oil analy…what?”

The morning of the appointment to sign for the loans, I was sitting at the foot of my bed on a hope chest. As I was pulling on my socks, I realized my feet were ice cold. I was 42 years old and I thought surely, by now, I was past the point that I could come up “chicken” about any experience. Sure enough, I was literally experiencing cold feet. Once I signed those notes — along with my wife of the time, who took the plunge right along with me — I was embarking on this journey for real. The only possible outcomes were abject failure and bankruptcy, success, or death.

I got the initial loans approved for Blackstone not because of my brilliant business plan, my dazzling footwork, or my good looks. I got the money — far short of what I needed, I might add — because one of my neighbors was a commercial loan officer for a local bank. Why he was willing to go out on a limb for me I can’t tell you. Normally, bankers are not that adventurous.

Starting sales

Nothing happens in a new business until someone sells something. Just short of three months from the first day I began working on Blackstone Laboratories, we opened the doors in 600 square feet of rental space. About 80% of the loan money had been spent on new equipment and building renovation. Bob had come in with me, and with the help of many volunteers we fashioned a functioning laboratory and hung out our shingle. But wait! We didn’t have any oil samples to run. Money was flowing out fast enough, but nothing was coming back in.

Along with all the other activities of the past three months, I had been putting together a potential client list. At that time there were only a few places in our local business area that used oil analysis. Users typically had large diesel engines, critical factory machinery, or airplanes. Today, with everyone beginning to realize the importance of oil analysis, the market is vast. When we started you could list all the client possibilities within fifty miles of driving distance on one pack of index cards.

I called most of the “possibles” and made an appointment with anyone who would talk with me. The market greeted the coming of a new oil analysis company in town with little enthusiasm. During that first three months I didn’t actually have anything to sell. I built the potential client list by asking the question, “If I get my oil analysis business opened by November 1 and I can offer you the best oil analysis program on the planet at no more cost than you are paying now, will you consider using it?” That was a fair question that was hard to say no to. When they said yes, as most of them did, it gave me the perfect opportunity to set up the second appointment. But it didn’t get me any sure clients.

Money flows out of a business as steady as a beating drum. In order to survive you have to somehow match that outflow with income. While that may be intuitively obvious, it is a rude awakening when, after opening the doors of a new business you suddenly become aware that with each passing moment you are bleeding away your liquidity and have nothing coming in to replace it.

Just in case someone should actually call us or drop in, Bob stayed at the office. I went out to sell.

There was a semi-trailer manufacturer in town that had a garage to service their semis. The facility was Quonset huts of varying sizes attached together. I had visited several times and was certain they were going to buy our service. An unusual aspect of the place was this: to get from the smaller office Quonset hut to the larger one in which their maintenance work was done, you had to pass through the men’s rest room.

On the day I was to close the sale, Bob was along so I could show him the ropes. We met with the maintenance manager in the office. After a brief discussion the manager got up saying, “Well, if you want to work with us, come on” and headed into the men’s rest room. I started to follow when Bob grabbed my arm. “Wait a minute,” he said, “we don’t need business that bad!”

Working without pay

In the beginning, all the shoe leather I could spend didn’t produce thirty new clients in two months of dedicated work. Because we didn’t take credit cards, all the work we did manage to procure was with businesses that had to be billed. The invoice terms were net-30 but payments tended to arrive 45 to 60 days from the invoice date. I could only get invoices typed once a month. After our grand opening at the start of November, we didn’t achieve any cash flow income until after Christmas that first year. By Christmas I was flat broke. I had to go over to Bob’s house one evening and confess. The bank account was tapped out. There would be no more paychecks until we got business rolling. “Think it over. Are you willing to come back to work January 2 with no income? In or out…let me know.”

Bob stayed. For the next year payday became a function of finding ways to pay bills with little to no income. I personally borrowed from every source possible until eventually no one would lend me any more. It took a year of hard selling to get enough income to pay bills even without payroll. Sometime during the second year of operations we managed to eke out enough to pay Bob and myself $100 a month.

Entering the computer age

As sales increased, so did the physical requirements of typing reports and invoices. Bob ran the samples. I took care of nearly everything else. We reached the point of sixteen oil samples a day sometime in the second year. We had no computers and no money to buy any. If I started typing reports at 1:00, I could produce the sixteen (perfect) reports by 10:00 that night. The reports were three -part NCR paper, so any typos meant I had to start over typing a new report. My typing skills left a lot to be desired.

Late in the second year a mildly rotund gentleman with a round beaming face strolled in our front door. He was starting a new computer hardware/software company and needed business. I needed a computer and a program to run it. We made a deal. With his help, we managed to build a functioning computer system that could produce a perfect Blackstone oil report. It multiplied my report capabilities several times over. When we added the invoice function the following year, we had a system that could comfortably produce fifty reports a day.

The poor years

I come from a family of seven children. We grew up without having much other than the community of family closeness. In his autobiography, Ray Charles speaks of poverty: “Poverty knits people together. Affluence has the opposite effect.” Being desperately broke in the early years of the company’s development and working closely with Bob had a familiar ring to it. We were certainly a nonprofit business without having the tax benefit of being such. Business grew slowly, though we were never without things to do. One of the problems was neither of us could get any time away from the business. He didn’t have many oil samples to run, but they needed to be run every day. I had to be on the property every day to report the data and take care of the other aspects of running a business. Typing reports usually happened late in the day, after being on the road selling all morning and afternoon. Bob decided we needed another person so we could get the occasional day off.

Sometime in the second year, my brother John started hanging around the lab. Bob, who couldn’t stand to see idle hands, put John to work. John had sick leave income so was doing better financially than the two of us. He learned one lab job, and then another. He eventually was running the lab, freeing Bob up to do other things, including getting the new computer system up and functioning. For a while, John’s appearance was spotty, sometimes working at a factory, sometimes at Blackstone.

Then one fine fall morning, John showed up at Blackstone to work full time. While we needed the help, there was no money to pay him. We were not in any position to put anyone on the payroll since we really had no payroll. But John was family and was showing faith in what we were trying do to, so I welcomed him to the operation and tried to figure out how we were going to support him.

During the first year of operations I had invested several thousand dollars in Blackstone. Most of it was borrowed. Our revenue had grown to the point that I drawing some of that money back from the company and was getting some of the loans off my back. In order to support John I simply diverted the loan payment money to him for income.

Driving beaters

John had always driven “beaters” for transportation. When something, anything, went wrong with one of them, he would simply abandon it and buy another. Anything that was transportation was okay with him . When he started at Blackstone he was driving a rusted out AMC Hornet. The company bought me a Jeep pickup truck since I had to be on the road selling and my problem-ridden Jaguar had died. John’s Hornet died so I gave him the company pickup to drive and bought another Jeep, an aging Wagoneer from a car lot.

The only reliable set of wheels between the three of us was the Jeep pickup. When either Bob or I broke down, John would get the call to tow us in. Having had the experience of being on the strap behind John once in my life, I had no desire to do it a second time. Towing is a two-person function if it is to be done safely and successfully. With John up front you were sort of on your own. It wasn’t that he forgot you were back there. He would simply set off and navigate traffic as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

Returning from a late fall, family campout in southern Indiana, Bob suffered an electrical failure in his wife’s aging Toyota fifty miles short of home. John got the call. He found Bob along the berm of the northbound interstate lanes. John hooked Bob up to the strap and lit out in a cloud of dust. Everything went well until John swung out to pass a semi tractor-trailer rig at highway speeds. When Bob steered left to follow, the steering locked since he had forgotten to turn on the ignition. There followed the wildest ride of his life. The Toyota swung left as far as it could go, then swung back to the right, threatening to tunnel itself under the semi. It stopped short and swung left again. Bob was sliding back and forth in ever increasing arcs and there was nothing he could do about it. John continued the pass and a final hard swing took both of them to the ditch, fortunately upright. Bob was speechless. It took awhile before he could pry his white fingers off the steering wheel.

Price matters

We continued to build Blackstone by saving engines in cars, trucks, airplanes, and factory machines. Our clients stuck with us because our program really worked. We saved them money, it was as simple as that.

Selling it was another matter. You can be the best and know you are the best but still have trouble convincing new client prospects. Our defensive position was to maintain our current client list by saving them money. Our offensive position was pounding the bricks with all the energy I could muster up and still get into work that afternoon to get the reports out in a timely manner. There was intense competition out there for the limited numbers of businesses that used oil analysis. We were the best but not the cheapest, and cheap seemed, at least at the time, to turn more heads than did quality. The benefits of using our quality program were so great that I thought the cost of the oil samples was incidental. The problem was convincing new clients of that.

At first I tried selling oil analysis at the same price as my competitors. Most of them had subsidized programs, meaning they had another source of income, like oil or equipment sales, and could provide oil analysis at an unrealistically low price, often half of the cost of actually processing the oil sample. As an independent laboratory we had no such advantage. Competing price-wise was the shortest possible path to bankruptcy. I had to raise prices or cease to exist. We did that in short steps until we finally got to the point that the volumes we were running could support the company and the three of us, if we didn’t expect much income.

Enter Craig

Sales grew quickly in the first three years, but fortune really smiled on us when Craig joined us as a commission-only salesman. Craig was between jobs and marriages and was an acquaintance of John’s. Always open to a new product or idea, Craig stopped by one day to see what we were up to. It was our third year of operation. He found our approach to oil analysis exciting and decided he could bury us in oil samples in a short period of time. I’d heard it all before, but having been out there pounding the bricks myself, I was willing to try anything. Craig was different in a charming way. A moderately tall, bright-eyed, lanky young man with prematurely graying hair, he was a guy women wanted to hug. There were times I wanted to hug him myself.

If the Greek derivation of the word enthusiasm is “god within,” Craig was blessed with an entire committee of gods. He liked to laugh and it was fun laughing with him. We talked about where we might find new business and he decided it was factories, which were the biggest users of oil of all the companies that used oil analysis. I’d had good luck with factories and had several as clients.

We had a Ford factory in the Toledo area that sampled stamping machines regularly. We found a mechanical problem on one of their presses right before the 4th of July holiday. When they checked the oil reservoir they found parts of a gear. They managed to fix the machine over the holiday and lost no production. Had the machine failed during a production run, they estimated their losses would have been about $5 million. They paid us $15.00 for the analysis report. That’s a nice payback, no matter how you look at it.

Craig looked around and decided to target the automakers’ factories and those of their suppliers. The Motor City was within driving distance. After working the phones for a few days, something Craig had a wonderful knack for, he set out at his own expense to sell them.

Oil analysis was not widely used in factories at the time so he didn’t run into the competition that I had been butting heads with in other market areas. While I placed articles in trade journals, Craig knocked on doors, piquing interest in how much money the industrial guys could save with oil analysis

We had three months with Craig working full time, and during that time he brought remarkable progress to our program. His income on the commission-only basis was not growing fast enough to support both him and his ex-wife, so he eventually went to work selling roofs for a company that could pay him more. He stayed on with us, however, part time. He and I did a lot of traveling together in the next couple of years, doing presentations along with direct sales. Craig was, and still is, a remarkable individual. He will never be accused of being a small thinker. At one time he tried to sell the U.S. Air Force. I know. I was with him. They actually talked with us. We didn’t get the sale. (Just for the record, the U.S. Military does its own analysis. As we understand it, every military aircraft has an oil sample done before each flight.)

If Craig was the maestro, I was at least the saloon piano player. I saw firsthand what a professional sales person could do for a fledging company. We grew like wildfire until the recession of 1989. Those were heady years. We established decent incomes, upgraded the facility and eventually bought the building we were in. All three of us were driving company cars, though none of them were new or particularly reliable. From 1985 until 1989, I felt like we were achieving success.

The tide goes out

As surely as the tide rushes in, it reverses and ebbs back out again. Auto sales plunged in 1989, and the automakers and their suppliers contracted to bleak austerity. They work in a cyclical business, and roughly every three years (at least back then) they worked a boom and bust market. It was like a well-choreographed dance. When hard times came to call, they would cut all non-essential spending, including oil analysis. In the short span of three months, we lost nearly 50% of our business.

Craig drifted away and eventually moved to Colorado and remarried. I thought we would recoup the factory business when the recession ended, but it wasn’t to be. The oil companies, which provided cheap (read: subsidized) oil analysis programs, moved into the gardens we had cultivated. The automakers and their larger suppliers instituted new purchasing schemes that precluded working with a company as small as Blackstone.

Once the dust settled and I could clearly see where we were, we began trying to rebuild the dream. We had successes and failures, like any business. Competition had intensified during the long drought of ’89–’92. Many of the traditional markets we had been working in were occupied with new squatters. I found new ways to sell, but there were long periods of time where I couldn’t make much progress. For the ensuing half-decade we always had a main customer or two that sustained us, but it became increasingly difficult to maintain payroll and keep our aging equipment running. For the longest time, the magic was gone. We existed but we couldn’t seem to grow. Sales peaked in ’91, then flattened out and didn’t make any real progress until ’97.

Personally, things got equally as tough. Both my kids were headed off to college, my daughter to Indiana University, my son, two years later, to Purdue. If you haven’t had the experience of getting bursar bills unexpectedly, along with other miscellaneous charges from the university, you haven’t seen hard times. We had no plans or savings to cover the expenses, so we just muddled along, paying costs out of cash flow, which, while adequate for the four of us living together minimally, was hardly adequate under the new circumstances. We got by but I don’t know how. Much of it was my kids’ willingness to work and do whatever was possible with limited funds.

My wife and I eventually divorced. Then my brothers and I had a falling out. We had worked together a decade and though we had a lot of good times together, and we could not have gotten that far without all three of us, it became clear that unless something changed, we would eventually fail. Bob left first and eventually bought a small town newspaper, which he has turned into a successful operation. John retired to his workshop.

Turning point

In August 1996 I was just getting started rebuilding a two-acre farm property that my fiancé Sue and I had pooled our money to buy. Two weeks after moving in, Sue and I were married in the front yard. That was one of the few bright spots in an otherwise dismal stretch of time that had begun in 1991. I didn’t know it at the time but it was also a pivotal point in my life and the life of Blackstone Laboratories.

My daughter Kristin had graduated from Indiana University with an English degree and moved to Colorado. She had found happiness and success in magazine editing. My son Ryan had graduated with a mechanical engineering degree from Purdue University. He had interviewed for engineering work but hadn’t decided on anything definite.

While Blackstone hadn’t fallen into complete disarray, we had, for a very long period of time, established a pattern of no progress. We would win some and lose some, but there was no significant growth for six years. The dream wasn’t dead but it was seriously tarnished for most everyone with whom I was associated, business or personal. Except for one person.

Unbeknownst to me, Ryan, who had been on the outskirts of the business since the company started when he was 12, knew as much about Blackstone as anyone alive. I thought he would probably take an engineering job, maybe far away from home, and pursue his own life. He could have done that with my blessing.

One evening in August 1996, Ryan and his fiancée, Sheri, were over for a cookout. After dinner we were relaxing in my back yard when I asked Ryan what his plans were for the future. He said, “Well Dad, I thought maybe I’d join you to help build Blackstone.”

I was stunned. Here was a bright young man with great earning potential, saying he was willing to come work with me knowing I could hardly pay him a livable wage. I told him I would see what I could do. It took awhile, but on April 15, 1997, he went on the payroll at about a third of what he could have made elsewhere.

John was still running the lab at the time, and I’d brought Sue in to run the front office and accounting. With Ryan on the property there were four of us. We didn’t have much to show for twelve years of operations. Our equipment was aging and there was little money with which to replace it.

We had only one computer to write reports on, and it was tied to an old printer that we couldn’t get parts for. The original programmer was still around to help when an emergency came up, but he was never more than a moonlighter and had less and less interest in helping out.

From the moment Ryan first set foot on the property, the old start-up magic began creeping back into the company. His approach can be summed up with a statement he often made at the time, “Whatever it takes, Dad, whatever it takes.” I had company in my desperate situation and Ryan didn’t see it nearly as desperate as I. We had a business. We had cash flow. Working with him was refreshing. I had an inkling that we just might get the company back on track.

The old magic returns

I found a spectrometer in Detroit and the financing to buy it. That solved the problem of aging equipment. Ryan drove up to New Hampshire to spend a week at spectrometry school. He camped out in a tent in late October to save us hotel expense. When he got back he put the new machine in gear and, for the first time in history, Blackstone had an expert in spectrometry on the payroll.

It was wonderful to have a bright-eyed, enthusiastic young man to work with. He was interested in all phases of the business and took many chores of the operation into his office. We started making progress. Ryan set up new processes and systems that improved our efficiency. He solved many of the problems that had made us fragile. I had less to worry about and work became fun again. The mood of the company improved. There seemed to be nothing Ryan wasn’t interested in and nothing he couldn’t do. He was the first person I was ever able to teach the report-writing process to.

We had been on the Internet for some time. Selling oil analysis via the Internet was John’s idea. He’d heard about a guy who sold buckets using this new medium. There was nothing special about his buckets and they weren’t even cheap. But he became a huge bucket salesman with his Internet sales.

I agreed we should give the Internet a try. With the help of a computer-savvy nephew, Bob and John had started and administered a website. It wasn’t very good but it did generate interest, some of it international. Though it wasn’t expensive as a sales tool, it didn’t make us any money in those first few years either. Being in the throes of a perpetual cash shortage, I thought many times about discontinuing the website. When I mentioned this to Ryan, he thought otherwise.

By making it more informative and user-friendly Ryan thought we could make the website productive. We reorganized and rewrote it and had a professional reestablish our presence on the web. The result was amazing. The growth of the Internet during that period was incredible. More people had home computers, and our presence on the Internet meant oil analysis was available to the general public for the first time. More people became aware of what oil analysis could do for their personal cars and trucks. To use an analogy, for the first twelve years of our existence, we were trying to throw a basketball into the hoop from the far end of the floor. Using the Internet, we began throwing basketballs into a canyon standing on the rim. We can’t throw them in fast enough, nor is there any chance, in my lifetime, that we will fill the canyon up.

Upgrades & hiring

The software that originally got me past hand-typing reports and invoices was still in use when Ryan started. During his four years at Purdue’s engineering school he had become familiar with computers and networking. I don’t think it would be an exaggeration to suggest he was appalled by the antiquated system I had been limping along with.

Sales were improving, so he hired an outside contractor to build the foundation of a new database system. After a few months that company became too aggressive with their billing practices so we had to undertake the project in-house. Ryan tackled this project too, taking some courses to learn how to program and hiring a full-time programmer to help complete the project.

Early in 2002, sales were booming. I had my back against the wall — even with Ryan’s help I was writing so many reports every day that it was physically getting me down. If you’ve used our oil analysis program, you know we write individual comments for every report. If I had to keep typing reports at the rate I was, I was going to be worn out completely. We needed another analyst who could pick up report writing and some of the other aspects of the business.

“What about Kristin?” I asked, one rainy night as Ryan and I were making our way our to our cars after another long, hard day. It stopped Ryan in his wet tracks. “I’ll think about that,” he replied. By the next morning we were working on the idea of possibly bringing Kristin into the business.

Kristin and her husband were living in Michigan. She was managing editor of yet another magazine. They had recently relocated from Colorado and were settling into a new life and home. At first I didn’t think there was much of a chance of getting Kristin into the company. But after some discussions, she joined us in April 2002. As it turned out, Kristin not only proved to be an expert report writer, but she picked up many of the other business functions that were overloading the rest of us. Today, Kristin is a vital part of the business. She is not only the report writing champ, but manages virtually all of the non-direct operating functions of the company including the website and newsletter.

Saving engines

We have always had the technical ability to save engines and other mechanical systems from failure. As sales grew we saved more engines. As our saves increased, so did our reputation. When we save an aircraft engine it is often a life-and-death matter. When the save is an industrial machine, it can save millions of dollars in downtime. When it is a car or truck engine, it adds many years of useful life to the vehicle and is equivalent to putting thousands of dollars in a client’s pocket. When you compare the cost of an oil analysis to the potential savings, the payback is tremendous.

Looking back on two decades I can see turning points that brought us through perilous junctions in a long journey. Some of it was planned but much of it was sheer luck (or fate, if you will). There are nearly 300 million people in the U.S. alone, who own twice that many cars, trucks, boats, and airplanes. To keep those transportation systems alive and well, they need oil analysis as much as people need doctors. It is our job at Blackstone to make our technology as commonly known and accepted as X -rays and MRIs. We are doing that and the result is a phenomenal, modern-day success story. Is this a great country or what?

Pardon me for the long story. My business card says “Founder.” I’m proud of my kids and all they’ve done to make Blackstone the great and growing company it is. I’m proud of our technology and that we can make it easily understood. We don’t have a doctor to interpret laboratory results. We are the doctors.

Looking ahead

Jim is no longer with us; he passed away peacefully at his home in November 20, 2015.

But his dream lives on.

Blackstone has customers from all 50 states and over 75 different countries on six different continents, and we’re still growing. It’s been a great ride so far, and it ain’t over yet.

By Jim Stark|2024-09-18T14:23:22-04:00July 13, 2023|Aircraft, Articles, Gas/Diesel Engine, Industrial, Lab Tests, Marine|Comments Off

Oil Viscosity

Most of us have only a vague understanding of viscosity. We tend to choose an oil with a viscosity that we believe is correct for our particular engine, but would another viscosity improve or reduce the life of the engine? Can we pick and choose a viscosity outside the manufacturer’s recommendations?

Technically, viscosity is defined as resistance to flow. Commonly, though, we think of it as an oil’s thickness. To be more specific, it is the thickness of oil at a given temperature. The plot thickens (ha!).

The viscosity of an oil could be reported at any temperature, but to standardize things, most laboratories report either a low temp (100F or 40C) or a high temp viscosity (212F or 100C) and stick with either Fahrenheit or Celsius. At Blackstone we report the high-temp viscosity, which is generally the temperature the engine is at while it’s running and the temperature at which the oil spends most of its time. We can do the low-temp viscosity too, if you’re interested, but the engine spends so little time running at the low-temp viscosity that it’s not a useful test for most people.

An apple is an apple, no matter what language you use to describe it. In the same respect, there are many ways to describe viscosity: engines use the SAE engine chart, industrial equipment mostly uses the ISO chart, gear oils use the SAE gear chart, etc. (Download your own viscosity chart here.) No matter what you call it, the number given defines the thickness of the oil at the standard high temperature.

Multi-grades explained

Engine oil can be either straight weight or a multi-grade viscosity. A major difference between the two is simply the addition of a VI additive, which allows the oil to maintain more or less the same flow rate regardless of its operating environment. Think of the difference between honey and water. Cold honey flows very slowly, but if you put it in the microwave and heat it up, it will flow much more easily. Water, on the other hand, flows at pretty much the same rate whether it’s hot or cold. That’s because water has a very narrow viscosity range, whereas honey’s is much wider. When it comes to engine oil, it naturally has a wide viscosity range, like honey, flowing slowly when it’s cold and faster when it’s hot. But we want it to act like it has a narrow viscosity range, like water, maintaining a fairly consistent flow rate regardless of whether the oil is cold or warm. That’s where viscosity improvers enter the picture. The VI additives in multi-grade oil help it move more easily through a cold engine upon start-up, but still provide cushion and lubrication when it’s hot.

Which viscosity to use?

People often ask us if it’s okay to use a different viscosity oil than what the manufacturer recommends. And typically, the answer is yes. Engine manufacturers dyno-test their engines using a specific viscosity oil, so when you use the viscosity they recommend, you are working with a known result. Going to another viscosity is an experiment, but it’s usually a harmless one. For the sake of efficiency, you want to run the lightest grade oil in your engine possible, within limits. If you’re racing, for example, that may require a thicker oil to stand up to the heat demands of more extreme use.

Over the last few years we have seen a trend of lighter oil for new engines. The common 10W/30 of a decade or two ago has become a 5W/30, 5W/20, or 0W/20. Many manufacturers use 5W/20 or 0W/20 oil at the factory (even in trucks) and recommend it for everyday use for many light vehicles. Feel free to try different grades until you find one that suits your particular situation.

Changes in viscosity

Lots of things can affect the viscosity. Adding anything foreign to your oil can change its viscosity — some types of aftermarket additives cause a high viscosity, and some solvent-type additives can cause the viscosity to thin out. Another thing that can change a viscosity is contamination. Moisture and fuel can change the viscosity, depending on the contaminant and how long it has been present in the oil. Excessive soot and antifreeze often increase an oil’s viscosity. Exposure to excessive heat (leaving the oil in place too long, engine overheating) can increase the viscosity of engine oil, though leaving ATF in place too long can cause it to get thinner, not thicker. Some engines will shear the viscosity down no matter what oil you use.

When your oil’s viscosity comes back as either lower or higher than the “Should Be” range, something is causing it. The key is to find out why and repair your engine or adjust your driving habits accordingly, and to correct the viscosity and optimize your engine’s efficiency. Test your oil while figuring out what to use. Your wear metals don’t lie!

By Jim Stark|2024-09-19T10:39:52-04:00July 13, 2023|Articles, Lab Tests|Comments Off

About Aircraft Oil

Lots of people want to know: what’s the best type of oil to use in an aircraft engine? We see wide variations in engine wear depending on a variety of things: the cylinder type, how the engine is operated, and the environment it’s flown and stored in. What we don’t see a making a difference is oil brand. There might be a correct grade of oil, depending on how and where you operate your engine, but there is no correct brand.

When you change the oil in an air-cooled aircraft engine, the only oil you can safely use is an aircraft-use oil. To use any other type of oil is to invite premature failure of the engine due to detonation. Beyond that, it matters very little what brand of oil you’re using.

All aircraft-use engine oils on the market today (that we know of) are mineral oils, i.e., refined, petroleum-based oils. Some of them have an additive in them to aid in scavenging debris and carrying it to the filter or screen. These are called ashless dispersant (AD) oils. Without the additive, they are called mineral oils.

We measure the viscosity at 210°F, which is in the neighborhood of your engine oil at operating temperature at cruise. W100 oil is an SAE 50 oil at operating temperature, and so are 15W/50 and 20W/50. The only difference in the multi-grade oils is the addition of long-chain polymers (viscosity improvers) that cause them to be more viscous at higher temperatures. At ambient temperatures the oils act as an SAE 15W or SAE 20W oil to allow your engine to spin over more easily, but at operational temperature, the oil behaves as an SAE 50W.

Tradition would have you using mineral oil during wear-in of a new or overhauled engine, and then changing to an AD oil after two or three oil changes. While we aren’t exactly sure of the reason for this procedure (some theories suggest it helps with ring seating, though it could also just be held over from the days of yore), it’s fine to follow the engine manufacturers’ recommendations. After that, it doesn’t much matter which brand of oil you select. As long as you’re running an aircraft engine oil, the brand and type of oil makes very little difference in your engine’s wear patterns.

There are many variables that determine how an aircraft engine wears. We consider the oil type to be the least of these variables (if it has any significance at all).

By Jim Stark|2024-09-18T14:24:34-04:00July 13, 2023|Aircraft, Articles|Comments Off

By-Pass Oil Filtration

Want to run your oil longer than you used to? Lots of people do. We take many factors into consideration when determining your optimal oil change. Many people think choosing the right oil is important, but in reality, you can run any API-certified oil indefinitely, as long as it’s not contaminated. That’s the real key: not contaminated, with metal, solids, moisture, or fuel. So what can you do to keep your oil in pristine condition? Enter bypass filtration.

In-line oil filtration — the oil filter that comes installed from the factory — filters oil entering the engine down to roughly 30–40 microns (millionths of a meter). This is about the most the in-line system can achieve, because when the oil is cold or the filter is partially plugged, a finer filter would cause too great a pressure drop, forcing open the filter bypass valve and allowing unfiltered oil to circulate through the engine.

Bypass filtration works differently. When this type of auxiliary system is installed, some of the oil bypasses the in-line filter system, flowing though a bypass filter and then returning to the oil sump. Using this method, sump oil is constantly being cleaned any time the engine is running, and it can be filtered down to a very fine size. All you have to do to maintain the system is occasionally change the bypass filter.

Bypass filtration systems remove blow-by and oxidation products from the oil and can help reduce silicon accumulations. Having a bypass filtration system installed increases the overall sump size of the engine, helping dilute the concentration of metals in the oil. Oil does not wear out. Its usefulness is limited only by contamination. Bypass filtration removes or dilutes many of those contaminants.

Is a bypass filtration system a good move for your engine? The only way to know is to test your oil. Send us a sample and tell us you’re considering adding a bypass filter. We’ll let you know what areas of the report might see improvements and whether those improvements would be essential to run longer on your oil. Bypass systems can be helpful, though not everyone benefits from a bypass system in the same way. In general, we have found bypass systems to be helpful in keeping the oil clean.

By Jim Stark|2024-09-19T10:21:01-04:00July 13, 2023|Articles, Gas/Diesel Engine|Comments Off

What is a Flashpoint?

We use the flashpoint test to determine how much fuel dilution is present in your oil. Technically speaking, the flashpoint is the lowest temperature at which a liquid will generate sufficient vapor to flash (ignite) when exposed to a source of ignition or fire. In other words, at what temperature do the vapors coming off your oil catch fire? For most gasoline oil samples, it’s around 380°F. For most diesel samples, it’s about 410°F.

Each brand/type of oil has an expected “should be” value for the flashpoint, and when the lab test results read lower than that value, it shows a contaminant in the oil. Most often that contaminant is fuel, though other things can affect the flashpoint too, such as solvents (like engine cleaner additives) or water. We calculate the amount of fuel present based on where the flashpoint is relative to the “should be” value and the volatility of the type of fuel you’re using in the engine. Alternative fuels like B20 can have a different impact on the flashpoint than standard fuels, so be sure to let us know if you’re using anything other than standard gas/diesel as fuel in your engine.

Based on the margin of error for the methodology we use for measuring the flashpoint, the lowest fuel dilution value you’ll see on one of our reports is <0.5%. That’s our way of essentially saying that no measurable fuel dilution was detected in the oil. If the flashpoint of your sample reads the same as the “should be” value, we’ll report a “TR” (or trace) of fuel dilution. In other words, it’s likely there was a very small amount of fuel dilution present, but not enough to quantify. After that, you’ll see fuel dilution reported as a percentage of the sample. The most fuel our test can accurately read is 10%. If you have more than that, we’ll report >10% (and you should head to a mechanic).

How much fuel is too much? It depends. We have different allowances for different types of engines based on their typical operational conditions, and we share those values in the “should be” column. If you’re constantly exceeding those values, you might consider the type of operation the engine sees just before sampling. Are you idling the engine to warm it up? Have you just been running errands around town? Is the dealer changing your oil (and starting your engine briefly to pull the vehicle onto a lift)? That type of operation can introduce a little fuel dilution into the oil and as such isn’t necessarily a concern. If the amount of fuel in the oil is consistently above 2.0-3.0%, or if it’s increasing from sample to sample, that might indicate a more serious problem.

A little fuel dilution – the type you’d get in your oil from operational factors — will cook out of the oil once the oil reaches operational temperature. If there’s a fuel dilution problem, though, you’ll see telltale signs: a rising oil level, high fuel dilution readings in testing, a strong fuel smell to the oil, and possibly low viscosity readings and increasing wear as well. The concern with excessive fuel dilution is that it dilutes and thins the oil, which might limit the oil’s ability to effectively protect and cool your engine.

By Jim Stark|2024-09-19T10:43:23-04:00July 13, 2023|Articles, Lab Tests|Comments Off

Spectrometry: The Marvel of the Lab

We occasionally get questions about how oil analysis works. You send your oil to us and you get a report back, but what happens in the lab? Is it magic? Some sort of voodoo? What happens to the oil that allows us to determine what’s in it?

At the heart of oil analysis is a spectrometer. It is the machine that allows us to quantify wear metals, additives, and contaminants in oils, making oil analysis a useful service in predicting potential problems in engines and machines of all types.

The plasma in the process

A spectrometer can be aimed at a star to determine what elements may exist in the star, if all the star’s light is being generated by the star (rather than reflected off the star). Spectrometry works on the same principle, but we have to first create the light. We do this by converting the actual oil into light energy. This is done by injecting the oil into something called plasma. You can think of plasma as a flame, since it looks like a green flame. But plasma is much hotter than a normal flame, and it needs to be in order to do its work. The plasma we use has a temperature of about 10,000° C. Plasma is actually the highest state of energy (the states of energy being solid, liquid, gas, and plasma).

Different types of plasma have been used over the last several decades that oil analysis has been commercially available. Early on, plasma was electrically generated as an arc. The drawback of an electric arc is that as it is generated, it can vary in intensity because the electrical part generating the arc erodes. The erosion causes changes in system resistance, resulting in variable plasma intensity. When using plasma to read the intensity of light from elements, it’s best if the plasma’s light is constant. Otherwise, errors can be introduced into the process.

Inductive coupled plasma, known in the trade as ICP, works by converting argon gas into plasma. So long as the argon pressures and flow rates don’t change, and the power causing the plasma’s generation is steady, the intensity of the plasma stays the same. This gives ICP spectrometry the industry gold star for incredible accuracy.

The rainbow connection

To understand what happens next, think of a rainbow. When you see a rainbow, what you’re really seeing is moisture droplets in the air acting as prisms to separate the various wavelengths of light into individual colors that can be seen by the human eye.

A spectrometer uses this same principle. A prism inside the machine takes the “light” that’s generated by injecting the oil through the plasma and separating it into the different light frequencies of the elements. Each beam of light is then directed to a tiny slit on what is called an aperture plate. The aperture plate is a thick metal device, about 10 inches wide by 18 inches long, and the slits engraved in it are finer than a human hair. The aperture plate allows us to measure the intensity of each beam, using a device known as a photomultiplier tube.

A photomultiplier tube senses light and reacts to its intensity by vibrating faster as the light intensifies. Voila! By placing a photomultiplier tube at one of the slits on the aperture plate, we can get a digital readout of the intensity of light for any particular element in an oil sample. However, as amazing as this process is, the spectrometer is dumb as a box of rocks if the operator doesn’t install a program that will let the computer strut its stuff.

Let’s recap what we’ve learned so far. We know that argon is turned into extremely hot plasma, which burns the oil completely, turning it into light waves. The spectrometer refracts this light with a prism and then optically directs the distinct light frequencies of each of the elements to a slit in an aperture plate. A photomultiplier tube travels to each of the light slits and “reads” the amount of light there by vibrating. This marvelous arrangement still can’t tell us what we want to know without further instructions.

Setting the standard

The next step in determining what is in the oil (and in what quantities) comes in the form of “standards.” You can think of standards like your daily vitamin. Just as you can buy vitamins that contain a certain amount of iron, the iron standard (which is a liquid) contains a certain, “standard” amount of iron. You can buy standards that contain however much of any element you need.

Each standard has a certain amount of a particular element in it. If we want to know, for example, how much iron is in an oil sample, we need to give the spectrometer something to measure against. This allows it to know how many vibrations to count to determine how much iron is present. The first standard we use is a blank — that is, a zero standard — that has no iron in it. At the iron slit in the aperture plate, the photomultiplier tube vibrates at a certain rate per second. Then it remembers that rate as zero. Then, for example, a 100 ppm iron standard is fed into the machine, and again the photomultiplier tube vibrates, but this time at a faster rate. The machine remembers this rate is equal to 100 ppm. Setting the standards in the spectrometer is a process is known as calibration, and it’s something we do many times each day. It allows the spectrometer to know what standards it should be measuring against.

The spectrometer records each element’s information into a chart and uses the chart to determine how much of each element is an in actual oil sample. This process, where the photomultiplier tube travels to each slit and vibrates, repeats for each element we want to measure in an oil sample. The vibrations are translated to ppm (parts per million) readouts using the charts that were set up by the standards. Suddenly the spectrometer looks like a genius! It vaporizes the oil and tells us how much of each element is present in the sample.

There are 72 elements on the periodic chart that make enough light, when injected into the plasma, to be read on a spectrometer. Some elements make lots of light and are easy to analyze accurately. Others, like tin, make very little light and are more difficult to accurately gauge. This, along with differences in standards, calibration, and the set-up of different spectrometers, is the reason that you may find differences in the results coming from different laboratories.

A spectrometer is like your television or your car — you don’t have to understand how it works to use it. There is only one answer to how much iron, copper, or any other element may exist in an oil sample. We think ICP spectrometry has the best shot at giving you the correct answer. It is accurate and repeatable, which is a requirement for giving you an accurate appraisal of how your engine is doing mechanically based on its wear properties.

By Jim Stark|2024-09-19T10:44:38-04:00July 13, 2023|Articles, Lab Tests|Comments Off

What are Insolubles?

The insolubles test measures the total insoluble materials in an oil sample — that is, all solid or liquid materials that are not soluble (won’t mix) in with the oil. We test insolubles using the centrifuge method. A measured volume of oil is mixed with a heated solvent, agitated, and spun at high speed. Insoluble materials collect at the bottom of a tapered glass test tube and can then be quantified. The insolubles level indicates how fast the oil is oxidizing and how effectively the oil filtration system is functioning.

Virgin oils shouldn’t have more than a trace of insolubles in them. The insolubles in virgin oils are from the normal oxidation process of the oil, which leaves free carbon in suspension when oxygen forms with hydrogen (oil is a hydrocarbon). Or they can be from additives that have fallen out of suspension.

Industrial oil normally contains a very low level of insolubles due to the few and relatively mild heat cycles the oil experiences (heat cycles accelerate the oil’s normal tendency to oxidize). Further, oil filtration on industrial machines may filter particles as small as 2 to 10 microns, keeping the oil pristine for a very long time, often years.

Automotive and aircraft oils however, suffer the most difficult environmental problems of all types of oils we analyze. They regularly receive blow-by products from the combustion process, and they suffer extreme heat cycles. Any contaminant will accelerate the oxidation process, causing insoluble materials to increase. Because excessive solid material in the oil limits the oil’s ability to lubricate effectively, an engine oil with a high level of insoluble material needs to be changed.

Excessive insolubles can form if the oil or engine is running hot, is receiving more than a normal amount of contamination or blow-by, is suffering more (or more severe) heat cycles than is normal, is being run longer than a typical use cycle, or, on the other side of the coin, if oil filtration is marginal or relatively ineffective.

If we found no contamination in your oil and your oil change intervals are normal, we often mention a problem at oil filtration as a possible cause of higher insolubles. Your oil filter may be inferior, or it is possible the oil filter bypass valve has relieved if the filter is becoming restricted. The filter system bypass may also open upon unusually cold starts when the oil is too thick to pass through the filter media. Once the bypass relieves, the filter is effectively out of the system.

The insolubles test is a fair measure of several possible problems in your engine. One high reading needn’t be a cause of concern. Several high readings in a row merit investigation of what the problem may be.

By Jim Stark|2024-09-19T10:45:32-04:00July 13, 2023|Articles, Lab Tests|Comments Off

Industrial Oil Analysis

Industrial machinery literally runs on oil, and that oil needs to be maintained. Oil that becomes wet, acidic, or abrasive will turn on its host (machine) and become a liability. Oil analysis can help.

Maintenance programs, when in place at all, have historically depended on a time-based change program (often at an annual shutdown). While this is better than nothing, with time-based intervals, you have no idea whether the oil actually needs to be changed or not. Changing the oil is time consuming and if you’re throwing away good oil, you’re tossing money down the drain, hurting the bottom line.

Through analysis, you can monitor the condition of your oil to ensure the oil change interval is correct, and you can also monitor the health of machines, scheduling inspections and repairs during planned down-times instead of waiting for mechanical failures.

Moisture problems

Industrial oils run “cold” compared to other (such as automotive-use) oils, and they tend to accumulate moisture. The moisture comes from humidity in the air, or in some cases, it’s directly introduced to the oil from coolants and related systems. Moisture affects the lubricity of the oil, decreasing its effectiveness. Moisture in the oil can cause a variety of problems, such as poorly running hydraulic rams, machine seizing, and chatter.

Another negative effect of moisture in oil is acidity. Oil, by its molecular nature, cannot become an acid. But there is always a little moisture present in oil that’s operating at relatively cool temperatures, and that moisture can turn acidic. Acids in a machine’s oil sump will corrosively attack internal parts — not only the metallic parts, but the seals as well. Corroded valves become ineffective. Many headaches in a machine’s operation can be directly attributed to oil condition. Though oils do not respond to the pH test, there is a neutralization test called Total Acid Number (TAN) that can easily spot oil that is becoming problematic.

Abrasion problems

Industrial oil becomes abrasive from wear metals, abrasive dirt, and particle contamination. Too much metal in the oil can make the oil itself abrasive, causing a snowball effect in wear or seal degradation. Machine seals are lubricated by the system’s oil, and they will last a long time if the oil is maintained effectively. If not, the seals will degrade and cause leakage. Leaking machines require pans under them, which need to be vacuumed regularly, and the waste oil poses a disposal problem. Fresh oil is purchased needlessly, running up maintenance costs. Machines that leak also run the risk of being run low on oil and having improper oils used as replacement. All these expensive problems can be eliminated by keeping the oil in serviceable condition.

What about filtering the oil?

Many industrial operations hire filtration companies to filter insolubles and abrasive contaminants from their oil. Some plants operate their own filtration equipment. Filtering oil that’s currently in use is a good idea, and it helps companies avoid needlessly purchasing virgin oil products, but it has limits. Not everything can be removed by filtering the oil, and some filtration systems are less effective than others. Oil analysis can help determine which oils need filtering or changing and it can help determine the effectiveness of a company’s filtration program.

Not all wear metals and abrasive contaminants can be filtered out of the oil; they tend to accumulate and eventually reach levels that leave the oil unserviceable. A test known as the ISO Cleanliness Code (also called a “Particle Count“) can be used to rate the cleanliness of an oil sample. This test also shows the effectiveness of the machine’s in-line oil filtration.

Preventive maintenance

When a machine you depend on for your daily output fails, it costs far more than the cost of repairs; a company can lose millions in down time and lost production. When you think of it, the cost of a routine oil analysis for your machines may be the least expensive insurance you can buy to keep your machines mechanically healthy, well lubricated, and functioning trouble-free.

Need kits? Order yours today!

By Jim Stark|2024-09-19T10:34:13-04:00July 13, 2023|Articles, Industrial|Comments Off