Freebie Oil Evaluation: Water Ingression Test

This is number two from a series of half a dozen very useful, and free, motor oil tests that you can perform in your very own garage.

If you are one of the many people who owns a vehicle that is driven infrequently, is commonly driven on low mileage trips and/or is driven or stored in a humid area or one that often has wide temperature swings, then performing the crackle test would likely be a good idea. This is a simple DIY test which will tell you if condensation has caused water build-up in your oil.

Of course, it would be reasonable to wonder why you would need to check for water ingression, and the answer, to put it simply, is that, water build-up leads to acid build-up. Acid build-up leads to corrosion, and pitting is caused by corrosion. In case there is any confusion, pitting is BAD, and, even a premium, extended drain synthetic oil like AMSOIL can eventually be overcome with water/acid build-up. So, perform a crackle test to determine whether water is building up in your oil BEFORE acid build-up depletes the acid fighting additives in your oil and corrosion begins.

It is worth noting that fuel in your oil can cause some confusion in the results of this test. Performing the blotter spot test (business card test) beforehand will tell you if you have fuel dilution. If you do, then you probably don’t need to worry about water ingression and the crackle test is likely unnecessary. The fuel dilution alone may be reason enough to consider changing your oil, if it is severe enough and/or causing any other issues.

To use the crackle test, you place a very small quantity of oil onto a hotplate of some sort which is set to a temperature high enough to boil off any water in the oil. Since most engine oils are not volatile until they gets up around 375 degrees F or higher (synthetics much higher than that), you could set the plate to a temp anywhere between 250 and 300 degrees F.

When you place the oil on the hot plate, you’ll hear a crackle as the water boils off. You should hear it very quickly as long as you use only a small amount of oil. Of course, if there is no water in your oil, you will hear no crackle.

Paying for a an oil analysis performed in a lab will not only tell you IF there is water in your oil, but also how much contamination has occurred. Nevertheless, even though less information is provided through the crackle test it’s nice that you can utilize this free test to at least tell you if water is present.

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