OK about 6 months ago I resealed my oil pan and installed my oil pan brace. While my pan was down I cleaned all debris and oil residue from inside pan and bottom on engine. Since the oil pan reseal i have only put on about 1000 Miles on the car so i felt no need to replace my oil. Today i drain my oil and it was charcoal black and found gunky debris on the tip of the magnetic oil drain plug. What can cause this if i only drove the car for about 1000 miles (weekends) . I used valvoline VR-1 20-50

 

i had the same thing in my motor right after the rebuild with about 1500 miles or so

answers please!!

 

try running royal purple in your motor
and see wat happens

 

id guess that it is residue from sealant that got dissolved in the oil.

 

yea that as well... do another oil change and see if it happens again

 

It's ferrous metal. To me that is the only reason it's stuck at the end of the magnet like that.

 

No, that stuff is junk. If you want to run synthetic, use Amsoil, Mobil 1 EP, or Valvoline Synpower

How many miles on the engine? Quite common to see significant wear metals associated with break-in, get an oil analysis done.

My experience is 20w-50 is still too low viscosity for these motors because of extreme thinning associated with fuel dilution.

 

Perhaps you had some gunk in your oil coolers......

 

UMMMM I am going to take the cooler down and see....

 

In aircraft turbine engines that is called paste. It is considered as normal wear.
Most people don't run magnetic drain plugs so they never experience this.

It is from the rubbing surfaces... side seals, corner seals, and rotor oil seals sliding on the side plates. They, plus the rotor gears continually polish each other.

Synthetic might slow the process. Why not try some next oil change and report back?

What is best for wear surfaces is not always best for burning in the combustion section as your ashless Valvoline VR1 oil is.

Barry

 

In addition to the metal, new hard seals that haven't completely bedded might also explain an unusually dark color for 1k miles.
If you installed the magnetic drain plug with the rest of the rebuild, some of that metal might have been stranded in the coolers and lines previously and is just now being caught.

 

change your oil and keep driving it

I'm sure they all do this from the factory.

 

The engine is not a rebuild, it was a new engine from Mazda installed in 2002, I don't know the real milage but I would probably say it's around 30k or so. Compression is 100psi on each rotor, motor fires up in just one crank, The car was an automatic and I converted it to manual.

Do you guys think the VR-1 oil I have been using is the Part of the problem?

 

No. These engines tend to have high wear metals across the board, although when I switched to straight weight SAE 50 wear metals dropped significantly (as well as copper and lead). Synthetics definitely can't hurt (unless you're running carbon seal turbos), but I believe the best policy is to run a thick straight weight and change at 2k miles maximum. ALL of these engines (when driven hard on the boost) have fuel dilution which contaminates/thins the oil.

 

What mine looks like.

Collecting this fine metal before it goes through the oil pump is the biggest advantage.

The joke among aircraft mechanics is the boss asking, " Can you make out a part number on any of the chips?" Unfortunately once we had one with numbers!

Barry

 

Alright alright already. Geez-us...would you guys stop nagging me with pictures of magnetic drain plugs with black snot?..... I'll get one.

 

Try switching to different type of oil.

Or run cheap oil (meaning normal valvoline etc) and change it twice or 3x in a 1500 mile period and see what it looks like then.

Oil is cheap and easy to do.

 

some minor sleeving on the magnetic drain after the first few thousand miles is normal.

when it gets real metallic and chunky is when you have to worry.

 

He said 1000 miles from the oil pan reseal job but 30k on the rebuild.

Idk if your comment still applies.

 

My magnetic drain plug cleaned up nicely after about 4-5 oil changes.

 

Is this the same vehicle that is in the "shredded turbo" posting? https://www.rx7club.com/3rd-generation-specific-1993-2002-16/turbo-shredded-lock-nut-928653/
If so, might there be a connection?

 

U beat me to it. Lol

Also my first time with the magnetic plug had a fair bit of crap.

 

Its possible but That turbo thing was a one day ordeal,Same day of the turbo damage the car was never driven again,The gunk in the pan seems to be from mileage i guess. I am going to flush and clean everything out then do 3 oil changes on every 500 miles to see what happens

 

Yeah man I change my oil religiously and my oil is NEVER gunkly like yours. Like ever. Even if I don't do 2,3k miles in 3 months, I change it anyway. Like I said oil is cheap and easy to do. Its cheap insurance to just do it.

 

also depends how you cleaned the oil pan mating surface. if you wire wheeled it or sanded it with a DA then that metal all goes down into the pan and is nearly impossible to clean out and will just disappear after a few oil changes.

the turbo failure probably also dumped some metal into the pan which can hide in the baffle plates.