What do you think of Spectrographic Oil Analysis Programs (SOAP) Tests? If I subscribe to them, do I really need to cut my oil filter open every oil change?
SOAP tests are a great way of monitoring the trend of your engine wear. However, they are just that a trend, and one should not put to little or too much faith in them individually, but more so over the long term like every 100 hours or so. Put it this way, SOAP tests tell us about things we can’t see. They only detect tiny parts per million (PPM) of different wear metals and abrasives that are less than 10 microns in size. So you could have large chunks of metal in your oil sample that will fall out of suspension before the SOAP test, giving you erroneous readings. Cutting the oil filter open each and every oil change, tells us about things we can see. There is no better way of monitoring the immediate health of your engine than by cutting the oil filter open. So both tests work together to provide you with the big picture of how healthy your engine is.
