While checking oil on my '95 850 Turbo wagon, I was surprised to find what looked like brown dirt particles on dipstick. I changed the oil and after several hundred miles checked again and the top of the dipstick especially had these little brown particles, which break up when you touch them. What could this be? Car has 90K miles, and dealer said don't worry about it, try an Italian tune-up (Hard blast on highway). But I am worried. Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.

Dan-

Why guess? For $15-20, you can run an analysis on your used oil and find out if there are any problems.

Are you using synthetic? If not, it would be a good idea to do so.

It's probably a series of combustion related particles, primarily carbon.

Just out of curiousity, how are you, or how was the previous owner with engine oil changes, i.e. synthetic, following recommended drain intervals, etc? This is assuming that you and/or the previous owner did everything else right, i.e. right viscosity oil, ran the appropriate octane gas, had clean gas (you'd be surprised at how dirty or contaminated gasoline gets at the older gas stations with metal storage tanks, newer ones use fibreglass like composite tanks that do not produce small bits of junk like rust), improper air filtration that could have let in a tonne of particulate matter, and other ways of contaminating the combustion chamber.

I recommend using an engine flush at your next engine oil change, and running a synthetic oil. Also try getting a throttle body maintenance job done. Pretty cheap, no parts, and about 1/2 hour of labour. The Italian tune-up does do miracles on some cars. When my dad drives the car through city traffic for a couple days, the car feels a lot more sluggish. But after a day or two of 140-160km/h at about 3500-3750rpm for 30 km straight twice a day, of going to university, the car feels much more responsive. No doubt, this is all related to carbon deposits, particularly in the throttle body, where uncanny amounts of deposits accumulate and eventually affect the throttle body, and/or get consumed in the combustion chamber, where they can end up being little dark brown or black specks in your engine oil.

Also, along with running an engine flush at your next, or even next two oil changes, as well as trying the Italian tune up, also try running a fuel injcetor cleaner such as Chevron Techron Fuel System Cleaner (NOT Chevron Techron Fuel Injector Cleaner, AMSOIL Performance Increaser Fuel Injector Cleaner, or Redline Fuel Injector Cleaner. And if you can, BG. Don't get the Chevron fuel injector cleaner because it has a lot less detergent then the fuel system cleaner. BG has the highest detergent concentration, followed by Redline, AMSOIL, and lastly Chevron. All those other so called fuel injector cleaners have about 10-25% the amount of detergent that Chevron has, and Chevron has about 33% that of BG.

Thanks for the tips. I've followed recommended oil changes faithfully since new, but always using regular (dealer-supplied) oil, high-octane gas (presumably clean but I guess you never know) and filter changes. Have not done engine flush or throttle body maintenance but will do them, as well as Italian tune up.

My big worry was that these dirt particles in the oil would damage the engine, but it sound slike the concensus is that they will not?