Oilyzer - anyone tried one?

[shorod]

So while watching car shows this morning I saw a commercial for a device called the Oilyzer. I looked at the datasheet and website and it has me intrigued. There's no decent Google data on it yet, but I was curious if anyone on this forum has input on it. For the price I'm tempted to buy one and open it up to see if there's anything to it. Maybe it's just a CDS cell that calibrates to ambient light, then checks for how much light is blocked to determine good or bad. That would not really align with the "capacitive" description though.

If it uses the same method that some of the luxury cars use to determine oil life remaining, then this is probably a pretty good tool to have in the garage.

-Rod

[oilyzerman]

Hello!

I am one of the engineers that built the Oilyzer product. Just wanted to share some information about the Oilyzer and would love to answer any questions you have about the product.

The Oilyzer works on the basic principles of capacitive sensing (the same stuff that goes into your Iphone touchscreens, laptop touchpads etc.). We basically detect the quality of oil by measuring the dielectric of the oil sample. The quality of your oil is affected by many factors some of which are mentioned below.

At the moment, most car manufacturers have different ways of sensing the quality of oil in your car. My own car simply has a 15000 mile countdown from the last oil change which I never trust. Some new cars have a predictive method in which there isn't actually a sensor that checks the quality of your oil but a computer algorithm determines it based on data it collects on your driving habits, temperature, average speed. Our product is more closely related to sensing the TBN (total base number) of the oil under test. As oil becomes more acidic due to friction, temperature, pressure, suspended contaminants etc, the TBN value changes, and is a very reliable indicator of oil quality.

Optical or Photoelectric sensing has been used in the past to gauge the viscosity and opacity of oil, but has been proven to be unreliable and is not a technology used in the "Oilyzer" product. The combined capacitive and resistive aspects of measuring oil health or quality determines acidity, viscosity and contaminants (metal particulates, soot, dirt, coolant, water) with the exception of gasoline. The Oilyzer is able to capture most of the information regarding the "TBN" of oil when compared to a high end spectroscopy, flash and chemical based tests. It is a scientific and technologically reliable indicator when measured against subjective human based test methods (based on the color of oil or driving mileages).

There is a plethora of scientific information on the web and in scientific journals or on SAE.org supporting the premise for reducing the number of unnecessary oil changes (replacements) and to extend driving distances based on TBN and other factors related to scientific measurement rather than by subjective means.
http://www.calrecycle.ca.gov/UsedOil/OilChange/
http://www.nordicgroup.us/oil.htm
http://money.blogs.time.com/2009/09/08/the...il-change-myth/
www.sae.org keywords engine "oil dielectric longevity"

Personally we are not interested in forcing users to go 15,000 miles or more without an oil change, however we do have a safety factor added to the product to ensure that the product is conservative in its estimates and warns you way ahead of time before you destroy your engine! We are only interested in getting the user to buy a product that tells you on a scale of 1 to 10, the quality of your oil. We believe we are empowering the user to check their oil whenever they please and decide for themselves what they want to do. One can choose to change their oil after the Oilyzer lights up LED4 (assuming good driving conditions, fully synthetic oil that has run 5K miles on a clean engine) or they can wait for LED8 (orange indicator, about 9K on a clean engine using synthetic oil). But it is true that in general most people do change their oil more often than necessary which is based on the 3000 mile myth that came about in the post world war II era. Engine manufacturing has improved by leaps since then and does not require the same 3K oil change regime but then again it is totally up to the car owner to determine what they are comfortable with.

Feedback or comments are greatly appreciated. Thank you!

<X-posted on other forums>

- OilyzerMan

[shorod]

I'm curious about the "capacitive and resistive" measurements. These are very different measurements. Does the Oilyzer monitor the ESR of the "capacitor" and judge the "goodness" of the oil based on the ESR which could be derived from the quality of the dielectric (oil)? Or in addition to the capacitive measurements is there also a resistive measurement?

-Rod

[oilyzerman]

Rod,

We mainly measure the dielectric of the oil but also the resistivity of the oil. The results are combined to make a determination on the quality of oil under test.

- Oilyzerman

[534BC]

I'll try one of these since I go long intervals between oil changes anyways. It would be "no harm done" even it it doesn't work well. I'll get one, test it on various vehicle at various stages of oil life to attempt to confirm that my intervals are ok and to confirm that the unit is accurate.

[shorod]

So my Oilyzer arrived in the mail today. While it was several months after I ordered it, I must admit their customer service via e-mail was decent. I sent a couple of rather frustrated e-mails regarding the delays and always received a response back within a day or two. Eventually I was informed that the lot of Oilyzers received did not live up to their quality standards and they would refund my money, which they did. I asked them to notify me when they received a lot of Oilyzers that were ready to ship, and about a week later I received an e-mail telling me I could place an order. The Oilyzer arrived within 2 weeks of that order being placed.

I must admit, so far I'm pretty impressed with this thing. It's much smaller than I expected, about 1.25 times the size of an iPod Nano. I started out by checking the oil in my wife's car. Her 2010 Lincoln MKZ has about 1200 miles on the odometer, the recommended oil change interval is 7500 miles. With the Oilyzer correctly set to Synthetic I turned it on then placed several drops of oil from the dipstick on the sensor. Then I pressed the Oil Test button and a few seconds later LED 1 blinked, indicating the oil was in good condition. The Quick reference chart inside the sliding protective cover suggests that LEDs 1-7 are Excellent or Good, LEDs 8-9 is Fair, and a slowly flashing 10 suggests the oil should be replaced, rapid flash suggests there could be a problem with the engine.

I cleaned the sensor and then tried this on my 2007 Infiniti G35S which has conventional oil in it. My car has 11,600 miles on the odometer with a recommended interval of 3750 miles. I changed the oil at 500 miles as recommended by the enthusiast forum, then changed the oil about every 8 months (never hit the 3750 mile mark before feeling guilty for not changing the oil). The oil that's currently in the car has probably 600 miles on it. The Oilyzer lit up LED #2 which seems about right.

I cleaned the sensor and tried fresh from the bottle Mobil 1 0W-20 full synthetic for my Mother In-Law's Civic Hybrid. Expectedly the Oilyzer illuminated LED #1.

Now here's the kicker. I tried this on my 2004 Mercury Mountaineer V8 with about 57000 miles on the odometer. I've only owned it for about 4000 of those and changed the oil to Mobil 1 full synthetic 5W-20 and change it based on the Message Center warnings. The Message Center claims the oil has 33% life remaining. I used the Oilyzer and it illuminated LED #5. I still don't know what "technology" Ford uses for the oil change indication, but if I assume that when the Oilyzer indicates the oil is in Fair condition (LED #8) it's a good idea to change it, that calculates out to the Oilyzer suggesting the oil is 5/8 used, or 62.5%. That would suggest the oil has about 37.5% remaining before it is in Fair condition. That lines up pretty closely with what the Mountaineer is telling me. Of course I'm making SEVERAL assumptions here, and changing the oil at Fair condition, per the Oilyzer literature, would still be overkill. I feel a bit like a statistician here, manipulating the numbers to make them appear to correlate to what I want them to.

So I was very skeptical at first but figured I've spent more money on crazier things. I'm actually pretty comfortable using this as one more data point when thinking I should change the oil just because it's been awhile.

-Rod

[534BC]

Thanks for the report. I had to wait, but am going to get a few of these.

[534BC]

Does anyone know how to still buy these? Thanks. I pm oilman with no response.

[shorod]

Hmmm, it appears they weren't able to make it as a business. I'm actually a bit saddened by that. I even checked www.AsSeenOnTV.com and they still don't list them there.

-Rod