Found metel shavings in oil pan

[matt98eclipse]

Im in the process of rebuilding my tranny and decided to just pull the motor too. I wanted to clean everything up on the motor. My oil pan gasket has been leaking for a while so i took off my oil pan today and found a huge suprise! I found just a very small amount of metel shavings. Heres the thing the motor has never had any signs of knock at all. Could this be rod/main bearings or could it be the balance shaft bearing.

 

[Kastigir]

Really hard to know without pulling it apart. Check your crankshaft endplay. Also check your connecting rods.

 

[Jeff99GS]

Whats up Matt...Remember me?

It could be any of them....are they Goldish flakes? Hows your oil pressure?

 

[matt98eclipse]

Whats up Jeff? Yea i remember talking to you a while back when we both had 420a's . They looked almost like they were aluminum. they were very tiny pieces. I have a autometer oil pressure gauge and my oil pressure was always pretty high. whenever i would be WOT i would see 100+ psi gauge only reads up to 100 but it would be past 100 a little bit.

I think tomorrow im gonna pull off the oil pump and check out the balance shaft bearings. Im thinking about just doing a balance shaft removel kit.

 

[Jeff99GS]

Yeah I would take out the Balance shafts...but if there is already shavings in the pan it may have gotten to the rest of the bearings.

I would drop the pan again and at least check the rod bearings. You can also reach up in the engine and try to wiggle the rear balance shaft. (check for play)

 

[WIDSM]

Check the shaving to see if they're magnetic, that'll tell you if they're AL or not. Check endplay with a dial indicator.

 

[matt98eclipse]

Thanks guys i will check it out and get back with you as soon as i can.

 

[AWDTURBO77]

ITS THE BEARINGS I HAVE THAT PROB TOO.. A HEAR A KNOCK COMING UP

 

[matt98eclipse]

ITS THE BEARINGS I HAVE THAT PROB TOO.. A HEAR A KNOCK COMING UP

Care to explain more.

 

[Jeff99GS]

Pull a rod cap and check the bearings. Once it gets worse you will start to see GOLD flakes after it wears through the aluminum on the bearing. Then its going to get thin and spin onto itself.
If you spin a rod bearing you're going to need a new crank on top of all the other work.

So I would get to it early before it does MORE damage to the crankshaft.

If the rod bearings look okay then check the balance shaft bearings and the mains.

 

[matt98eclipse]

Thanks Jeff im gonna take it apart right now and see what i can find.

 

[matt98eclipse]

K i just got done takin off the oil pump so i can take a look at all the bearings and all the balance shaft and bearings look to be fine! So i guess i should check the rod bearings first then mains. What if i take all this apart and find nothing wrong with the mains and rods? What else could the little pieces of metel be?

 

[Jeff99GS]

How did you get the oil pump off without taking the oil pan off? How many miles on this engine?

 

[matt98eclipse]

I have the motor out of the car and on a engine stand. I had to take the oil pan off. If this is still the origanal motor it has 107,000 miles when i installed my arps there was LOTS of crosshatch left in the cylinder walls.

 

[matt98eclipse]

Heres a couple pics of the bearings and the block. Rod bearings dont look to good to me! What do you guys think?

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Cross hatch in cylinder walls

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[Jeff99GS]

They dont' look great but not real bad. Any pics of the crank journals? Any scratches?

You might as well re build it now...I didnt know you had the whole engine taken apart already.

 

[matt98eclipse]

Yea im gonna go ahead and rebuild it since its already all takin apart. Anyone have any suggestions on what setup i should go with? Im lookin for around 450 to 400hp and low 12s to high 11s slips. Keep in mind guys im on a pretty tight money budget since i just did a bunch of christmas shopping .


The crank jurnals all look good no scratches or anything.

 

[Jeff99GS]

Looks like you have a scratch right in the middle of that rod bearing picture. See were the gold color scratch is? That's where the flakes probably came from. Are you sure there is NO scuff on the journal that this bearing came from?
At least have the crank polished.

As far as building an engine to handle your goals. I would stick with the Stock 6 bolt, stock crank, stock big rods and get some 2g pistons with the stock 8.5:1 compression ratio. MLS headgasket with the stock 1g head. That's good up to 450 whp at least!