Metal in Oil Pan?
 

I dropped my oil pan on my 85 gsl-se to re-seal it and found 5-6 brass metal shavings. The engine has 174k miles on it and good oil pressure. I'm guessing that the shavings are bearing material, what Iwant to know is if it will make the engine un-rebuildable if I continue to drive it until i have a complete failure? Has anyone dealt with this?

Have you had this pan off before? those shavings could have been in there a long time
and not be affecting anything...but i wouldnt recommend driving it too much longer unless you just cant afford to like me. Ive always heard brass is the bearings but ive never seen brass in any of my pans...thnk god

Good Luck with your car, hope it aint major

I've never had the pan off before so hopefully your right and they've been there for awhile. It's my daily driver so I'll have to drive it until I can afford to get it rebuilt or find something else to drive until it's rebuilt. Thanks for the input. What I would really like to know is if anybody has had a bearing completely fail and and if they were still able to rebuild the engine or if the bearing ruined the irons, rotor housings, e-shaft........?

When the bearings go, they chew up the e-shaft. They have a coating over the brass so your bearings are rather worn all ready. If the bearings wear too much and start getting sloppy, the rotors can tear up the housings.

rebuild asap

oh no thats not good. Ive been reading this form for about a week and its scaring the crap out of me. Ive already read about 3-5 egine failure stories and it freaking me out hope this never happens to me..

good luck pal i hope everything turns out ok

haha... but seriously dude our engines work great and last pretty long as long as you maintain them. i'm at 176k on my SE and it pulls HARD. so don't fret about a rebuild. most cars require a rebuild everyonce in a while. rotary cars last pretty long actually.

Thanks, you've got nothing to worry about my engine has 174k on it and has never been touched, so it was probably time for a rebuild anyway. If you don't abuse them these engines are great. Mine still pulls hard and runs great apparently the bearings have had enough after 174k miles though.

Exactly, I just wish mine had waited for a better time to need rebuilt, works slow down here in Florida right now.

Did you find any fine flecks of brass or silvery metallic pieces in the oil pan? If not, take your oil filter off, cut it open and check there. If you find no further evidence of bearing material and this was the first time the oil pan has beenoff, it may be leftover material from assembly.

Bumping this thread. I am having what I assume to be a bearing issue with my 12A. It is a streetported 12A that I bought used. It was rebuilt by a reputable shop and did not have a lot of miles, maybe 5k KM. (I trust the seller.. but I do know that it was used in a drift car and probably run pretty hard...)

Before I installed it, I removed the oil pan and pickup, installed a new pickup gasket and resealed the pan. Only thing I found in the pan was some bits of excess gasket maker from a sloppy pan sealing job.

I swapped it into my car last season and drove it for the rest of the summer. I changed the oil and filter almost immediately after getting it running, probably 30mins of runtime. Always has had very good oil pressure, it has a shimmed regulator even for slightly higher pressure.

The next oil change i did was after about 1K km. I saw evidence of some metallic debris.

I have probably put 5k KM on it with 3 oil changes. I cut the filter apart, it looked good. Some very fine metallic debris still evident in oil however.

I just drained the oil recently, it only had 200 km on it. I cant capture it in a picture but the oil is filled with very very small metallic particles (gold coloured). Almost has a bit of a glitter to it but can only be seen with a light and the oil in a black container.

The plan now is to pull the engine and have it torn apart to figure out whats going wrong!

You could send the oil out to have it analzyed to see what kind of metal it is before pulling it apart. Suspect its bearing material and may possibly be normal wear.

What kind of rpms are you pushing on this motor? How often?

Yes I should have gotten an oil analysis a while back. I think I did not want to admit there is probably something up with the motor...

Yes I suspect it is bearing material, I think it is the only thing that would be that colour. This recent oil change was a good example because it has very low miles on it.. essentially just the mileage to drive the car to and from storage.

I do not rev the engine high at all, nothing above 7500RPM. I feel my setup has all the torque from 5k to 7.5k.

I can assume that previous owner was probably revving it quite high, being in a drift FB. I do not know if over revving would lead to this or more something related to the build, bearing clearance, oil deliver issue etc. perhaps contamination.

I did pull chunks of old grey RTV silicone out of the oil pickup screen but this wouldnt be able to make it past the filter... The previous owner had an aftermarket oil cooler and not OEM... perhaps it was running consistent high oil temperatures.