Having spent almost 20 years in the oil biz, primarily in the fleet/ag/industrial lubricants arena (a previous life that ended about 6 years ago), I think oil analysis has it's place but I'm not sure it would completely work for a bike. Most common applications are either heavy/however the road guys or heavy equipment and industrial applications(hydraulics/gearboxes etc). Most of those applications have much tighter preventative maintenance methods than we do in our personal modes of transportation (I said most not all!)
While I have seen large fleets use oil analysis to extend drain intervals from 8-10k miles to 15-20k miles, the purpose of the analysis was to watch the breakdown of the oil to get max life out of it. Sure, side benefit was to look for trace metals from engine components but in all the time I helped fleets do this we never caught a catastrophic failure.
In over the road transmissions, at least 6+ years ago, most of those guys switched to synthetics and went to 250k mile oil drains with NO analysis.
If you use Mobil 1 now and change at the 5k mark +/- I'd say you'll be fine, especially now that the weather is here for full time riding.
When you have one of those "sudden loud screech and the feeling of denim and saddle leather sucking up toward your prostate" moments, I'd be willing to wager that oil analysis would not have caught it, unless the sample had just been taken and the result came back fast to enough to do a tear down and inspection, most of us ride our bikes a lot and in a week may have put on 1000+ miles with no email or access to review the results and take action.
I do however keep in mind my Dad always told me there 's an exception to everything, so I'm just offering my opinion.
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Topic: Oil Analysis... (Read 1683 times)