I'm going to assume said patrol car is a Fiat power charger of sorts?
I guess you would have to put in the effort to research what numbers would constitute an issue. I figure Blackstone must have a range of normal, but how bad is a number out of that range? Is it worthy of dumping, or just a heightened sense of something may be coming? I am not in the know of these things. Also, never had an engine grenade on me either. Pretty conservative driver now that I'm older...
The thing is, the only people with enough data to answer that question work at Ford, and the data isn't public. Anyone else interpreting the number is basically making stuff up.
To be real safe, just change your oil every time you get gas. I mean, if one BS interval is good an even shorter interval must be better, right? People waiting 1000 miles to change their oil are just suckers!
The comments the reports give you will tell you if a particular metal is showing up too much in your oil and what it's cause might be.
Notice that key word at the end? I do
Huh?
The key word being "might"
Ahhhhh. Yeah, of course. But, if you have a really high amount of iron, copper, and lead in your oil analysis, after the normal engine break-in period, it's a good sign that you need to start looking at something going on in your motor. So, the Blackstone service can act like an early alarm in those cases. And if, after a couple of oil changes, you see the numbers getting bigger on the elements that aren't supposed to be growing, then you have a clear sign of abnormal metal-on-metal friction.
Why? Do you know what the acceptable range is for this particular motor? Neither does blackstone. For all either of you know, the motor could go another 500k miles with an "unusually high" reading, or it could blow up tomorrow.
Oil analysis is not some kind of new magic. It's old science and in regular use in many industries to predict wear and abnormal wear on engines. Those "in the know" can look at an oil analysis and tell you things like, "You have a cam lobe skipping." based on the numbers because of their experiences in the biz. For sure, you might be able to limp a motor on for hundreds of thousands of miles with abnormal wear, but the abnormal wear is still...
I disagree--I see a lot of people treating it as voodoo science that's absolutely essential for driving your car to and from the mall. I can see the benefits in some situations (heavy use, fleets/places with in-house service, situations where it's worth preemptively replacing equipment to lower downtime risk, etc), but spending that money for a car seeing normal service it's more aspirational (as in, I want to pretend I'm driving F1 and a fancy sheet of numbers is very impressive) than useful. (What does a consumer do if the numbers are "bad"? Pay out of pocket to speculatively tear down their engine? Smart money just runs it until it dies, following specified maintenance schedule, then gets it replaced under warranty.)
Or, as I mentioned before, if I see abnormally high numbers that indicate a high probability of bad internal wear, it might be a clue to head to the dealership to trade my vehicle in on a new one!
