After an upwards trend of wear metals increasing on my oil sample results on my 2014 I decided to investigate before problems started. My last sample came back unusually high for iron and aluminum for oil that had 3500 kms on it.
Ignore the mileage, cat oil techs aren't the most vigilant even on the best of days.
December 2018 my oil heat exchanger seal between the filter housing and exchanger started to leak, found the large exchanger cap was loose, tightened it to 30NM. No problem until couple months later when it started to leak again. I ordered a set of seals and replaced them by dropping the exchanger and carefully installing seals. Old seal had a crack in it. torqued to 30NM
No problems except for oil results coming back high, then this week I decided to check vehicle over before going on a long road trip. and was met by this again....
Leaking again from the top seal. I was starting to get annoyed as i'd only changed it 2 years before. Lucky I had a spare set of O rings for the job and on removing was met with this....
and
The internal heat exchanger fins have been rubbing on the shaft, the three grooves don't look bad but there is quite bit of rub through. I camera scoped the exchanger and it looked fine. It seems the oil exchanger has been vibrating loose and rubbing against the cap oil shaft and cap itself was introducing wear metal due to metal on metal.
Cleaned everything, lubed seals and installed, made sure the exchanger was resting against the location tang, reinstalled cap and torqued to 30 NM. Ran vehicle for 20 minutes at 2500 rpm to get oil up to full temp.
Came back and its leaking again. This time i find the cap has somehow loosened so I once more torque it up to 30NM. cleaned off and run for another 20 minutes. This time no leaks. Obviously engine vibration had shifted the o ring on top and moved again. Still cant understand how it came loose in the first place, its never been touched since it left the factory, factory o rings have location slots so they cant move.
I know this a long post but it may help someone with information and i'd prefer to share how something simple brought on issues that could have ended badly. And also to double check the repair, even though its been correctly torqued.
Hopefully the next couple of oil sample results will be better!!