I am the second owner of my 01'. It has had it's oil changed with DELO 400 every 3K since day one and the oil is amber at change time (on the stick at least). It is dark out of the drain plug but Blackstone says it is still like new and I want to keep it that way. Most likely overkill but I don't drive it that much so the expense is worth it to not worry about sludge build up.

 

As an experiment if no better info comes up. Maybe try tightening up your change intervals. I'm not super careful about my change times and the truck has over 200k

 

i run motor craft 5k miles. i have done that for over 500k miles over 4 7.3

 

I would say you can actually extend your change intervals. My lab reports say that I am throwing out perfectly good oil at every change. I usually run 8k-10k intervals on dino oil. No bypass filter.

 

If we're going to start talking about what engine oil looks like, then I'd have to ask, does it really matter? As long as the oil is doing it's job lubricating, acting as a hydraulic fluid, etc., should we be concerned with the color?

As for my truck, it's always black coming out of the drain pan at 5k miles. I've seen oil changes where it was black on the dipstick within a week of the change, and I've seen oil changes when it was clear looking after a few thousand miles. It has depended for me on how much or how little I've worked the engine hard or towed, etc.

I've had a few miles to play with some different oils and different driving conditions and get the results tested by a lab. My results were so similar (except for a few additive packages that showed a difference) that I even had our favorite, or at least former favorite engineer Eugene accuse Blackstone of laying down on the job and falsifying the reports since they were too lazy to do the actual work. (he had already worked out and posted here his theoretical engine wear curve based on mileage/hours and my engine didn't fit his model) I always enjoyed his posts and comments so I got an analysis done by another lab, which came back the same as Blackstone.

Anyway, if anyone is interested, on this sheet is a UOA from Rotella, Delo, Valvoline, and Delvac over the course of 140,000 miles. All were at or about 5,000 mile oil change intervals. All of them drained out of the oil pan black.

400k uoa click here

 

I have one of those engines that make the oil black within a couple days. What matters to me is what the OA says and mine are consistently great. I do 5k-6k OCI's.

 

Black oil usually means the detergent package is doing it's job, which is to pull the deposits off the metal surfaces and suspend them in the oil.

 

^

You can rule out the oil as the contributing factor by just changing brands on your next oil change.

 

Hmmm I have always ran T6... What would be a good replacement? At $100/ change, I dont want to start playing mucisal oil drums.

 

For the record I run the Rotella Non Synthetic (cheaper) and my oil stays amber in color for about 2K. I haven't tried synthetic yet as I have some seapage around the oil pan that I don't want to make worse.

I plan on running Non-Synthetic in the summer and switching to synthetic in the winter months for the Romp issues when cold starting as I'm too lazy to hook up the block heater.