I don't have enough experience to provide a educated opinion as far as the maching processes go but common sense says that something is coming apart internally. Those are big chunks. It seems like any machine work would only take small amounts of material at a time. I can't imagine even a shade tree mechanic leaving that kind of mess behind let alone a respectable machinist. How was the car running before this was revealed?

Looks like machining debris from shaving/boring to me. You have not changed your oil for 5500 miles? The better question is why is this all leaking after such low mileage? Obviously nothing was done right.

If you had that much metal from a bearing you would have been hearing knock or likely sized engine...

The engine was running great before I took it in so I don't have any idea what it could be. As was mentioned, the chunks are pretty big to be from machining. And I just got the car so the first thing I did was have the gasket replaced (it was leaking) and also got an oil change. The engine has over 200,000 miles on it, plus the 5,500 miles since it was machined, so its old

I'm a machinest we bore and Hone grind cranks shave heads deck blocks mill heads with cnc mills and everything you can think under the sun... none of those chips are from any machine that looks to be babbitt from the bearings or possibly aluminum from the head I had a camshafy take out a cam jurnal in the head left big chunks of aluminum in the pan hence why I rebuilt it I'd say you better take it appart and check before you ruin somthing.. in my professional opinion ... also the peices in the pan are hard to see should have gotten a close up of the flakes out of the pan.. causes could range from poor break in period , somthing not torqued or over torqued bad bearing clearence or not enough thrust clearence ( most likely the cause) poor housing bore tolarences... not being aline Honed properly or at all.. alot of thing could cause it you would have to see what went bad to find put could have even been clogged up oil galleries or contaminated oil.. is this a 1g? 2g? But if I were you I'd be taking it out and appart especially if you have aftermarket parts of any kind coz you will cause more damage to it...oh another possibility is detention for under octaning with the fuel unlikely unless you have high compression

I figured it would be the thrust bearings :/ that was my first guess if it wasn't the result of machining. It's a 2G GST which has been stroked at 2.2 L from 2.0 L. I'm going to send the oil sample in to Amsoil or someone similar to have them run diagnostics and see what they make of it, but i suspect that this will indefinitely result in an engine rebuild of some kind. Out of the most probable causes for these flakes, would you say that these are all going to be cheaper to fix by stripping down the engine than it would cost to buy a brand new engine?

I dono where you would buy a brand new7 bolt 4g63 but if you can find one cheap go for it ... if it was me I'd find a 6 bolt block tear it appart go through it new gaskets and seals touch up machining like recon to ds polish crank of its okay have bearing clearence cked and make sure everything's right then put it together and buy the few things you need to do a 6bolt swap for a 2g

A new 7-bolt is about $2,000 from what i've seen there's a scrapyard about 12 miles south that has 3 or 4 2g's in it so I might go snooping around there and see what sort of mileages the engines have. Guess i'll have to wait and see what Amsoil make of it. But you reckon that it'll require a rebuild of at least the bottom end?

I'd take the motor out see what the cause is it might be a easier fix then you think maybe just a cam jurnal like me

I do know that the swirl shaving is from a drill. Was any new holes drilled in the head for some reason? This is definitely time to pull the motor and go through it thoroughly. You have a lot of good advice here the ball is in your court now. Make sure you get back to us after teardown. I'm curious to know the outcome and where it came from.

TunedUp said:

I do know that the swirl shaving is from a drill. Was any new holes drilled in the head for some reason? This is definitely time to pull the motor and go through it thoroughly. You have a lot of good advice here the ball is in your court now. Make sure you get back to us after teardown. I'm curious to know the outcome and where it came from.

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That shaving your looking at isn't necessarily from a drill or any machine of that matter, I've seen motor failures that had similar shavings from bearings or wrist pins.. I e seen alot of distruction in my years so any things possibly but that shaving to me doesn't look to be from a drill and if it was how they not see that is just down right stupidity and lazy Ness

I have seen just about every engine failure there is, yet the only time I saw shaving exactly like that was a careless person tapping or drilling holes. I worked in a dealership for 5 years specializing in engine rebuilds. I now work on multimillion dollar jet engines. I have the experience to back what I stated, not just my own engine failures.
Edit: I do agree with you saying it's down right stupidity if it was, because it always is. And I wasn't trying to reply rudely to you I apologize if it comes across that way. Also, to OP look for freshly tapped holes or a new drilled hole for like a new coolant line or something that isnt original.

No pun intended dude I'm sure you've seen alot so have I I build race motors for a living. Not just my own I've seen block broken in have I've even seen a cylinder head melted holes through the head it self from heat in the cylinder running alcohol I've seen alot too I also use drills alot and end mills carbide cutters and all.. honestly neither of us cam be 100% coz neither of us did it respectively just recently when I took appart my other 4G motor when I took the arp head studs off the nut contacted the metal shim under the spring as I loosened it it carved and peeled a nice strip of metal that looks just like that just a little thiner so please understand I'm making a statement about it could be anything but in my opinion I'd believe it to be so.thing other then a shaving from a drill theirs not to much your drilling on a stock head not to mention if that was a shaving from a drill it be vary suprizing the motor lasted this long with out failure due to other parts not being cleaned or other chips inside the motor.. but as well we are all in tilted to our own opinions.


Gonna edit mine as well didn't see the bottom I didn't take any offence to anything you said we just have differant opinions is all don't really know what it actually is or how it got their but we both know seeing that the motor need to come appart and be gone over well and reassembled

The big spring looking piece stuck to the pickup tube is from a head stud nut. When you tighten down a couple of them they rub on the spring seats and a shaving comes off.

^^^ like I was saying. Come to think of it that happened when I put my dd motor back together but I saw it happening and picked it up before it went down the motor

Wait so they had the oil pan off, found flakes in the pan and didnt take the time to check the bearings? I would pull the rod and main caps off and check the bearings. Anything less is just speculation imo. ive found larger flakes than that in a seemingly healthy block. Turned out to be from the center main.

And as I recall Smilinjay, your car was running fine when you found those large chunks of bearing in you oil pan!

There was part of a broken bolt in the oil pan as well so it's very possible that something was overtightened and so the thread was stripped off it. Several bolts in the engine had been overtightened and broke off whilst the mechanic was doing work, so clearly the engine wasn't well looked after i'm going to scrounge together some money and get a healthy budget behind this project so I can get all of this stuff done at once. At most it'll have to be a new motor, at least it'll be working on the engine whilst it's in the engine bay if the fix is an easy one. Either way it's going to cost money i'll send off the oil sample and get back to this thread and let you know what the flakes were identified as

One possibility i've been considering is that when the engine mount broke off as the owner was driving home from work, it shoved the cam gears and thus the camshaft up into the rocker cover and so dug-off material from it. It's also possible that the weight of an entire engine resting on the broken mount and also slamming into the cam gears caused some part of the engine to dig into its bearings or part of the engine block because of the impact. It would make the most sense in my eyes considering the guy had no issues when he rebuilt the engine 5,500 miles ago and didn't see anything that needed replacing. He said he damn near broke the bank when he did the last rebuild so he didn't cheap-out on anything, that's for sure

Picture number 4 resembles what I got out of my head coolant passages after having it machined but BEFORE assembly and I spent a lot of time with compressed air blowing out shavings that looked very much like that. They were all stuck in the coolant passages. I tipped the head back and forth for probably 45 mins and kept blowing air in to get them all out and so far so good on my end. Just looked familiar to me.

Mauispyder said:

And as I recall Smilinjay, your car was running fine when you found those large chunks of bearing in you oil pan!

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Yessir. Ran like a champ
To the op, regardless of where the metal came from, the motor should be disassembled. Judging by what you found in your pan there is probably trash throughout the oil oil galleys. Its the only way to clean all the metal out and see what all has been damaged. But start with the bearings! It takes 20 min to pull all the caps off check everything.