Oil Analysis Results - Things To Be Aware Of

Took a CFM engine class years ago in Cincinnati, OH and one of the instructors was also a classic car engine builder and one of the great things about these blue collar classes is the tangents that get run off on that have nothing to do with, in this case, the aircraft engines we were there for. An interesting point he brought up was when doing an oil analysis on your engine where you simply want to see how your engine is doing one needs to be careful in skewing his/her results with outside forces/elements. He pointed out that during lets say a 5K oil run not to spend that oil sample running your vehicle at the drag strip. Don't have 2K of those miles towing some crazy heavy load. But one thing he pointed out which was interesting was to never use and type of oil additive or more common a bottle of fuel injector cleaner as these can really mess with the results. Metals like manganese and magnesium can be skewed to a point where a perfectly running engine can showing slight concern areas where there are none. What he pointed out was you would not get some crazy high number that would easily be ignored due to an error but numbers that are just elevated enough to make you worry about something you don't need to. Again, this is for the person looking for a nice baseline report that gives a good overall picture of their engine. Shit, I really rambled there.