quick update; got my oil report back. the first report is in the column on the right. that oil is of unknown type & unknown viscosity, but the best guess is that it was Mobil 1 0w-40. it sat in the engine for eight years. you can see that there was a lot of fuel & a lot of silicon in it, which makes sense. unburned fuel from the combustion chambers slowly seeped past the rings & carried some lokasil with it into the oil.
the most recent test is the column on the left. this oil was castrol syntec 5w-30 with about 1000 miles on it. sort of a break-in oil. my guess was that, since many of the oil passages hadn't had oil flow in eight years, we'd see high metal oxides in this batch, and we do. aluminum and iron are high. silicon is still high, but decreasing. no fuel in this batch, so rings are looking good. all in all, this is about what i expected. i'll do another shorter oil change interval this time (2000 miles or so) & expect the numbers to look 'normal' at that point.
car is running very well & is a riot to drive. only weird issue just started the other day; when the car sits for awhile, it doesn't want to start. it pops & coughs. finally it fires up w/ a little smoke and all is well. leaky injector? we shall see.
