[SaltyNC]

Yikes! Your copper and iron are elevated, too. At ~57K, you're definitely in the sweet spot for bearings. A lot of us also cut the recommended oil change interval in half for ~7500 mile oil changes for regular driving, and some like going 1/3s on the interval at 5000 miles for simplicity.

Hey, just curious, did you happen to run a bottle of Techron fuel treatment concentrate before you did the oil change? I did right before I got my 43 lead reading, and I've wondered if that might have somehow contributed to the higher reading. There is no lead in Techron, but there are some anecdotes out there where people had elevated lead readings after using the full bottle of the concentrated fuel system cleaner. The thought is the cleaner in Techron is leaching some lead. I have no idea idea if this is possible, just anecdotal comments I've read.

That's interesting about the topside extractor. It's probably a coincidence, but when I got my reading of 43, I used a topside extractor on my "in-between" oil change. The next oil change, I drained it from the pan and caught the sample mid-stream. That analysis showed 18 in the oil, and I think I had done a Techron treatment then, too.

I've got a bottle of Techron in my tank right now, because I let the car sit for about 2 months, and after I go through a couple more tanks of gas, I'm going to do an oil change and NOT do the Techron before my next analysis and see if lead is still low.

I'm still doing my bearings, regardless, just for peace of mind. I'm going with BE Bearings and BE-ARP bolts. Until this week when I went research-crazy, I was going to do WPC with OEM bolts. I think either of these solutions are good for the S54, but not a permanent fix. The nice thing about the BE bearings is that they are made by the same company making the OEM bearings. BE had them make them slightly thinner, so when they add an additional anti-friction layer, they are not thicker, but rather retain slightly more clearance than OEM bearing shells. So, we get just a little more oil layer, we gain an anti-friction layer, and we retain the same ability to do oil analysis and watch for lead. The BE-ARP bolts solve the problem with the original ARP bolts. The OEM bolts have a more complex torquing procedure.

Salty