Well in case some of you didn't notice I have been gone for the week, I was at a "Failure Analysis" class at a Caterpillar training facility this week.Although it was put on by Cat it is a general course that can be used to troubeshoot anything made of metal, we had parts from many other Brands of engines and equipment as well.All I can say is WOW!!!! I wish I had the knowledge learned at this class 20 years ago at the start of my wrenching career instead of the tail end of it.Taught us a lot about metalurgy and being able to look at any kind of part and be able to tell WHY it failed from from several different objective angles. This was the first class there is another advanced class that hopefully I can get into next year.This week we covered The principles of...1- Metallurgy2- Wear3- Fractures4- visual examination5- Threaded fasteners6- Connecting rods7- Crankshafts8- Engine bearings9- Piston, rings and linersThe advanced class which we got the handouts for as well but get covered in part 2 are1- Engine valves2- turbo chargers3- Gears4- Anti-friction bearings "Roller bearings"5- Shafts6- welds7- Lubrication8- Hydraulic pumps and motorsThere was a fellow in my class who is a Lab analyst in a Cat oil sample lab whom I had a couple of conversations with as well and got some insitefull info as well as from our instructor on lubes and the misconceptions of extended drain intervals with certain lubes and such. We had a discussion about filters as well as part of the class.Overall one of the best Technical Service training classes I have been to over my 20 year career.:thumb1:It will greatly help me throughout this site to "Fix" a lot of misconceptions I see and read throughout many of these forums as well it helped me realize some of my own misconception about how and why some things fail.:smart:The one most important thing we learned about most failures of metal parts come from Nicks and pits caused by as the instructor called it "Mr. Blue flame" that have been nicked by a torch tip causing a pit or nick as well as dropped parts, the most common is the small nicks put in metal from contact with some other source, hammers and punches and chisels grinders ect. There are many types of manufacturing glitches we learned about that happen during the manufacturing process as well and we learned to identify the differences between the manufactures glitches and failures from use and abuse.

I want to hear more...

I want to hear more...

Patience Grasshopper! If anyone has any questions they would like to know more about post your questions and I will see if I can help answer them, this will take time as the amount of info we got and covered was almost overwhelming and insiteful. I am not saying I can answer all the questions but I can give a stab at them, If anyone has broken pieces they want to know more about post some high quality closeups of the pieces with a description of what and where it is for and I will give it a go. I could scan some pages or pics from the material I got to help with show and tell but bear with me as this would be time consuming.

Then start by elaborating on this

and the misconceptions of extended drain intervals

After reading several bosch books I just got, I went back to cumminsforum to throw the book at their blasphemous claims. It's amazing how many rumors there are that are completely wrong and misconstrued. That was a lot of the reason I went back to college.

Then start by elaborating on this

After reading several bosch books I just got, I went back to cumminsforum to throw the book at their blasphemous claims. It's amazing how many rumors there are that are completely wrong and misconstrued. That was a lot of the reason I went back to college.

The ONLY WAY to run extended oil changes is along with the use of oil sampling analysis. I already knew this, but it especially critical with standard dino oils, The use of bypass filters is what gets most in trouble with failures if not sampling. As I had learned from filter classes years ago which this class just reinforced was the fact that bypass filters along with a partially plugged full flow filter which by the way filters better than a new filter actually filters out the additives from the oil. The oil analysis tests show up as depleted Zinc Phosphate levels first off but what isn't shown on the samples is the level of the phosphate depletion, it only shows as zinc and the phosphate is the more important aspect of the equation and there is no test for depleted phosphate.

The use of bypass filters while runing extended drain intervals without the sampling is what gets folks into trouble.

The one and only oil mentioned by the lab tech that they wouldn't touch is any Schaeffers oil, said they have way too much moly in them and it breaks down too fast and the wear metals are always way high in the samples they see with this oil. The only other red flag was any Rotella oils, they did say they have gotten better but years ago Cat and Cummins both released public statement bulletins stating not to run Shell/Rotella oils as they did not meet the specs for thier engines, they have since improved the quality but is still not a highly thought of oil from the manufactureres standpoint.

They did have good things to say about most synthetic oils as they rarely if ever see any breakdown of the oils just the depletion of the additives like zinc with the use of bypass filters and extended run intervals. He did commend Amsoil as a top quality he said the only thing that has most lab techs wondering is the oxidation is a tad higher than normal on their samples but it is that way naturally and never climbs though, they don't know what or why the additives amsoil uses is like that but it was not a bad thing.

A bit of info for AHD64 is to add to his oil filter comparisons is the "Sediment Index rating" which is how much contamination capacity a filter has to hold before it is plugged and restricts flow and /or bypasses, every manufacturer has one but most don't like to show it as this is the most important aspect to a filters quality and then micron rating is a second to that.

This is about all I can add to the oil portion of the discussion as we did not get into any depth as that is part of the advanced failure analysis class, these points came from sideline discussions from the lab tech and class instructor together.

I will read through the lubrication booklet and see if there is any ground breaking news in it when I get spare time.

Good info, thanks for sharing!