Recently dropped a friends oil pan, and there were some metal shavings in the pan. Almost goldish color, but thats probably because of the oil. At first i thought "spun bearing" because he had always had a light ticking noise that we could never identify (about 5k on b16 swap into crx), it wasnt valve lash, and we pretty much isolated it to: tensioner, water pump or maybe the alt. belt.

So we drop the windage tray and loosen the rod caps, but nothing. they all look fine. What the hell else could the shavings be from? Thanks in advance for any help.

 

bump

 

main bearings or thrust washers?
do the particles stick to a magnet?

 

I can check that out tomorrow.

Are main bearings a different material than rod bearings?

 

?

 

check the head. my gold "sparkle" was from the rockers

 

Thanks for the suggestion.

Just out of curiosity, why didnt the oil filter catch the particles from your head?

 

my guess would be the thrust bearings also....I'm guesing that this "ticking" isn't too loud and that there wasn't that much metal?

 

Step #1 see if they are magnetic. I'm betting they arn't and you have a bearring issue. I'm not sure about hondas in particular but it is very common for a tri-metal bearring to run a copper second layr which is what you may be seeing.

 

Sometimes its loud, sometimes its not.

With a spun bearing, would there be an obvious lack of power, because there sure wasnt on this vehicle. The only reason we dropped the pan was because he was do for an oil change and the threads were shot on his pan, so we got a new one.

 

A spun bearring that would be true. A failing bearring NO. If the bearring had actually grabbed the crankshaft and spun within the journal you would most definitly know. But if the bearring is secure on the journal and slowly wearing away (more common) you won't notice much of a power change if any and the noise may be unherd at first and progressively get worse. I ran a 9.60 on a failing bearring, so trust me, you don't lose that much power ;-)

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Phase Change Racing &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote">A spun bearring that would be true. A failing bearring NO. If the bearring had actually grabbed the crankshaft and spun within the journal you would most definitly know. But if the bearring is secure on the journal and slowly wearing away (more common) you won't notice much of a power change if any and the noise may be unherd at first and progressively get worse. I ran a 9.60 on a failing bearring, so trust me, you don't lose that much power ;-) </TD></TR></TABLE>


Did you fix this problem by simply changing the bearing or was machine work involved?

 

Depends on the extent of the damage but if you are having flakes like that you are most likely going to have some degree of scarring on the crank (but not always). You might be able to get away with swapping bearrings, but it would be a better idea to yank the crank and have it checked out. If the damage is minimal a nice polish job should take care of it, if the damage is a bit mroe severe its going to need to be turned. From the sound of things I think you are probably in the realm of just needing a fresh set of bearrings and maybe have the crank polished.

 

 

Them r' some big chunks! Will a magnet pick them up? They look a lil more like hardened material than bearring material.

&lt;------ has had many different kinds of chunks of metal in many different oil pans lol.

 

Yeah, a magnet picked them up. Im stumped, but i never really had a clue in the 1st place.

 

???

 

Listened to the engine with a stethoscope today. Sound seems to coming from the head. Nothing abnormal from the block. Valve lash is fine, LMA's?

 

how many miles on this block?

 

5000 since rebuild.

 

bump for shaving.

 

Well we know they are ferrous. Judging from the shine of them, i'd guess they are from a hardened surface. Listening on a scope can be a bit difficult if you are not used to it. Listen down on the block on the oil pan rail. Blip the throttle up to 2k rpm or so and let it settle. You will hear the bearring noise on the rise in RPM. You can verify any wear on the cam visually pretty easily. The wear is on the lobes 99% of the time, very rarely on the bearring surfaces. One other thing I just thought of would be wear on the thrust bearring that could make those shavings without any performance probs (other than clutch chatter sometimes) and it wouldn't make any difinitive knocking sound. Grab the crank pulley and try to push/pull it. If you feel a difinitive "clunk" as you change direction, you have some wear going on.

 

<TABLE WIDTH="90%" CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=0 ALIGN=CENTER><TR><TD>Quote, originally posted by Phase Change Racing &raquo;</TD></TR><TR><TD CLASS="quote"> Grab the crank pulley and try to push/pull it. If you feel a difinitive "clunk" as you change direction, you have some wear going on.</TD></TR></TABLE>

Good advice! Ill try this tomorrow. Thanks again...

 

Not a problem. I sped 9 hours a day listening to engines with a stethascope and grading them. Its nice to be able to apply some of what I do at work to something outside of work.

 

bump for update.