The article below will describe for you one from a total of six incredibly simple used oil tests you can use to quickly establish the continued viability of your oil, without ever sending it off to a lab.

If you happen to be an individual who owns a vehicle that is driven infrequently, is commonly driven on low mileage trips and/or is driven or stored in a humid place 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 clearly indicate if condensation has caused water build-up in your oil.

Of course, you might wonder why it is so important 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 can cause corrosion, and pitting is caused by corrosion. 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.

Now, if there is fuel in your motor oil, this can cause confusion with the test results, so perform the blotter spot test (business card test) beforehand to check for fuel dilution. If fuel dilution exists, that may already be a problem, so the crackle test is a moot point.

Performing the test is simple: place a small quantity of oil onto a hotplate of some type (just a few drops is plenty). Set the hotplate to a temperature which is higher than 212 degrees F (the boiling point of water). Since motor oil won’t typically be volatile till 350 degrees F or higher, setting the temp of the hotplate anywhere between 250 and 300 should work well.

When you place the motor 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 don’t use much oil. Of course, if you have no water in your engine oil, there will be no crackle.

Of course, this hot plate test is not a very accurate test, and it will not tell you how much water you’ve got in your oil, as a professionally performed oil analysis will, but, it can provide you with some helpful, cheap information.

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