Oil Spy promises to monitor engine oil quality

At the NEC Classic Car Show last weekend I came across Oil Spy, a brand new and simple diagnostic test for your engine. 

Oil Spy claims to tell from a drip or two of the dipstick oil what the condition is of four factors:

• Grime: Contamination of the oil by dust, carbon etc.
• Oil condition: Basically, the oxidation, and whether it has deteriorated. 
• Water: How much there is in the oil, suggestive of engine condition, blown gaskets etc.
• Fuel:  If the oil is contaminated by fuel.

I suppose it's like the blood test you have done at the doctor's - the sort that can tell your cholesterol count, any inherited diseases, if you've been doing drugs etc.

You run the engine until it's warm, then put a couple of drops from the dipstick onto the bull's-eye on a little absorbent sheet, wait a few minutes and then read off the results.

 The name 'Oil Spy' itself isn't new.  I came across an ad for a product of this name in a 1950 edition of Popular Mechanics  [inset], although that is effectively just an oil level gauge.

But this latest version sounds a new concept - at least for the inexpert joe public.  I've not heard before of a product that promises to check the oil condition so scientifically and yet make it intelligible to beginners.

Oil Spy uses a method called paper chromatography.  There's a good beginners' guide to the process here. 

They charge £12.95 for 26 of the test sheets, which suggests its a year's supply of fortnightly oil checks, supplied in a tidy version of what used to be called 'tobacco tins', with fold-out instructions.   The full pack is pictured here, cleverly fanned out for display at the show.

A 'refill' of 26 test sheets is £10.  Online, the price for p&p is an eye-popping £3.95, so you might want to wait until your friendly local chandlery stocks it.

At 50p a test, and with maybe £5 of tests in between oil changes, perhaps Oil Spy wasn't a practical proposition when oil itself was cheap.  But now, with even a gallon of the cheapest oil touching £10, its time may have come.

Could you make your own sheets?  I've no idea what goes into chromatography paper, and perhaps the value of Oil Spy is how they've managed to make it understandable to beginners, rather than the paper itself.  But it looks like a neat and worthwhile idea to me.

The makers cleverly launched it at the Classic Car Show because it's the hands-on mechanics of older cars who probably need it most.  But they said it's also ideal for older diesel engines, and that includes canal boats.  I'm waiting to hear more from one of the designers, who's a marine engineer himself I'm told.

[Thanks to tweeters @UncleMarvo and  @krypto for reminding me that the process is called paper chromatography]

Comments

[Martin]

Hmm. fuel contamination? No doubt designed with petrol in mind, how does it go with 'gas oil' ??