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That's a relief....

Today I got the results from the latest oil sample I sent in to Blackstone Labs for analysis. The news is good. The technician wrote the following in the results document:

It may not seem obvious at face value, but iron has improved significantly. Iron's wear rate (how much iron the engine made per hour) is significantly closer to what universal averages show as typical. If iron is stable from here, or happens to improve a bit more, this engine will be in good shape. Other metals are stable and at low levels to boot, so this engine's wear profile doesn't leave much to be desired at 1,583.36 hours SMOH. No contamination found, and the air and oil filters are working well.

This indicates that the metal found in the oil filter during the annual inspection was from a single, short-term event. It could have been a wear event or possibly, as was suggested by the mechanic, a bit of rusted metal that came off a surface somewhere. Either way, this is a very good result and I feel a lot better about the situation now.

I'll run the engine for 25 hours or so on this oil, then have it changed again. We'll likely send out another sample for analysis at that time.

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