I just drove my volvo cross country and right before i went on the road trip i changed the oil. After 4k miles the oil is pitch black, Is this normal? I can drive my lexus 10k miles and the oil is still not as dark as the oil in the volvo.
The Volvo has a turbocharger and you need to make sure you change the oil every 3K miles or use synthetic to go to 5K miles. The turbo runs hot and the heat degrades the oil faster. Black is carbon and the combustion of the Volvo is perhaps not as clean as the Lexus.
Is the Volvo new to you? What year and how many miles on the Volvo? Perhaps a previous owner was lazy on maintenance and you are pulling out carbon and sludge left over from previous owner.
Black oil doesn’t mean “bad” oil, but at 4K miles an oil change can’t hurt.
Oil color mostly is meaningless.
If you checked any oil dipstick before running the engine and cold it will be darker. Check it hot and it will be lighter.
Agree with andrew on oil color. Our 2007 Toyota has the oil still look like vegetable oil straight out of the bottle at 5000 miles, while the Nissan with Mobil 1 will have black oil at that mileage. Both engine are in near new conditon. It’s not a cause for worry.
We can’t really help you with that answer, as we don’t know the overall condition of your car. You might have used an oil that is a dark color to begin with (royal purple, for one), and after a couple of miles, its even darker.
Your car might be a diesel, and those things turn oil BLACK in no time at all, but the oil is still doing its job perfectly fine.
Or the car can be new to you, and have been driven by someone who didn’t much care for changing the oil in their car very frequently, and built up carbon and sludge in the engine over the years, and now here you are, running fresh oil, and going on a nice long distance drive, which loosened everything up.
If the car is new to you, I would recommend changing the oil again, and seeing how it looks after several thousand more miles. Maybe even send off a sample of the oil to be analyzed by Blackstone Labs, or a similar company.
BC.
I’m the only owner for both the lexus and the volvo. the volvo has 68k and the lexus has 160k. the volvo had a maintenance program for the first 60k miles so i always had the oil changed at the dealer. I used mobil 1 for both cars.
Black oil means the detergents in the oil are doing their job of cleaning out the engine. As noted above, consider your turbo. Don’t push the oil changes when you have a turbo.
My oil goes black in the first mile after an oil change, but then I run diesel.