Piece of metal came out when oil changed.

Hello everybody,

So I bought a 2006 jetta tdi 2 weeks ago and decided today to do an oil change. A second after I pulled the oil plug I heard a "pleng" in the catch pan. Oh oh that can't be good I thought. I found the piece and cleaned it up, it's maybe a quarter inch by a quarter inch roughly. I hope somebody would be able to identify it and shed some light into my misery.
https://imgur.com/a/b8DOC

Looks like a segment of a steel washer to me. Maybe a piece of a valve spring retainer or hydraulic lifter? Does it stick to a magnet? I'd get a magnetic drain plug to grab any more ferrous metal bits that might be in there. It's probably worth pulling the valve cover and looking at the springs, cam, lifters and whatnot.

time for a new engine soon

What does the rest of the piece look like? Do you know the history of the car, such as did it have a failed cam and lifter sometime that was replaced?

So the piece is magnetic and I'm sure it came out of the pan. I got no history on the car whatsoever. All I know is it has Malone Stage 2 and EGR delete and straight piped. If I have it running with open air intake I cannot hear anything being wrong with it. All I notice that when I'm going down the highway I'm losing boost and then suddenly it kicks in again...losi g boost and kicks in again...and so on.

Have you removed the valve cover and looked things over?

I'd remove the valve cover asap. You don't want to drop a valve or have a catastrophic failure.

If I pull the cover what am I looking for?
Edit: I was hoping somebody would be able to identify the piece.

To me it looks like it has been in the pan for some time as the edges that were broken look like they have been deburred and smoothed from probably vibration against the pan.

It is something that I have not seen in the valve train assembly.

Since you did an oil drain, cut open the oil filter and look for metal fines.

check into the "Zip tie turbo repair" to help with the turbo problem.

Shatterpate said:

If I pull the cover what am I looking for?
Edit: I was hoping somebody would be able to identify the piece.

Click to expand...

Um anything that's broken

Shatterpate said:

If I pull the cover what am I looking for?
Edit: I was hoping somebody would be able to identify the piece.

Click to expand...

It's a pretty small fragment, but I think it is a piece of a valve spring retainer or hydraulic lifter. Could be from old damage that was repaired, or the engine could be about to destroy itself. You should look for a broken valve spring retainer, worn out cam lobes, and damaged lifters. If you aren't sure what those items are, you should probably have a friend who does know or a mechanic take a look.

When you pull the cam cover you can see if the bolts are hex or XZN. Factory are XZN but many use hex replacements as they are reuasable. This will tell you if the cam has been replaced before.

I looked into the oil fill cap and could see the bolts are XZN. I also cut the paper out from the oil filter. I took a few picshttps://imgur.com/a/bZa4U
There are tiny specs in there, not sure how many are allowed to be in there but I also don't know how long this filter was in there for. I did again pull the intake an had the engine running at higher rpm too but I could not hear that flopping sound at all. This car runs great starts amazing at -30 not plugged in so I think I don't have the cam issue. BUT I will crack the cover open on the weekend to be certain. Now if I take everything apart do I need to replace the bolts of the I think it's called rockers? I want to take off the camshaft to see if the lifters are ok or not.
Thank you so much so far for all your input, most of you are being very helpful.

It’s tough to say that removing the cam for inspection is practical. Yes you have to replace the injector rocket and cam bearing cap bolts. They are TTY. Most people just remove the cam cover and bar the engine over to get a look at the lobe tips as the pass into view. If the chamfer is gone you’ll hole the followers at some point. I find it practical to listen for the intake noise to know if any followers got holes and inspect the cam without removing anything other than the cam cover.

Not everyone changes the rocker bolts, so really, that tells you nothing. The fact that it runs fine with no odd noises and the filter only has a bit of metal on it, says the cam is fine. If it had holed a lifter, the filter would be covered in metal. What you have is a past failure.