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Old 05-23-2018, 01:09 AM   #16
Civilitas
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City: PNW/Seattle-ish
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The smart move is an oil analysis, which is cheap, easy, and definitive. And what you learn from it can be very valuable for the future.

Test one engine now; run the engine to temp (if it has not been run in a while), then let it cool and sample it. $25 and a few days for the results. You will learn about the health of the engine and the oil, and then be able to decide intelligently. You will get useful data points on wear, water, coolant leaks, air filtration, etc. Odds are 99% it will come back with a very clean bill of health, as a number of multi-year samples with modern oil I have seen have come back. If it doesn’t, you’ve likely discovered something important.

Presuming it comes back clean, you can then decide how long to run the oil. And when that interval is up, you can sample the other engine. You will then have a test of how oil holds up in your engines, what a future change interval should be - very likely longer than you are doing - and also the health of both your engines.
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