Name those metal chunks?

300D · Nov 26, 2019

Found these today:

Any knowledgable guesses? My current guess is a piece of lifter.
Car has been running pretty good. 46 mpg on it's last tank.
Though I am about to pull the cylinder head because of suspected leaky head gasket and a bunged glow plug hole. So will be able to dig deep on the top end. I will also pull the pan to see if I can see anything under there.
I will report back.

Mongler98 · Nov 26, 2019

Looks like lifter, probably from a rebuild long time ago

300D · Nov 26, 2019

Pulled the pan. Didn’t find anything untoward under there. Bit of schmutz in the pickup screen, so I pulled the pickup and cleaned it. Everything I could see from the bottom up looked good. Also pulled the valve cover and all lifters look in pretty unmarred condition from the top.

Must be what mongler posted. Old lifter trouble?

Going to pull the cylinder head as originally planned tomorrow and will get an even deeper look.

Louie710 · Nov 26, 2019

That looks scary. Id definitely still pull the head just to make sure

BobnOH · Nov 26, 2019

300D said:
Pulled the pan. Didn’t find anything untoward under there. Bit of schmutz in the pickup screen, so I pulled the pickup and cleaned it. Everything I could see from the bottom up looked good. Also pulled the valve cover and all lifters look in pretty unmarred condition from the top.

Must be what mongler posted. Old lifter trouble?

Going to pull the cylinder head as originally planned tomorrow and will get an even deeper look.

I'd drive on. Bits of stuff in the oil is more common than you might think. You'll certainly be more sensitive to any noise or performance degradation.
1 data point, is this the first time you've pulled the magnetic oil drain plug?

300D · Nov 26, 2019

BobnOH said:
1 data point, is this the first time you've pulled the magnetic oil drain plug?

Yup. The last oil change I did, I did from above, and forgot about the magnet.

Head is being pulled anyway. It is the current task that the chunks diverted me from.

Back on tracK-ish.

jettawreck · Nov 26, 2019

How much history do you have on the car?
I have to agree (much as I don't want to) that it well may be from a prior "event".
Since you intend to pull the head anyways the forensic process may reveal something presently going on or from a distant past. Post up what you find (or don't find).

Mongler98 · Nov 26, 2019

someone a few weeks ago had a very similar post. it was from old work from the PO

300D · Nov 26, 2019

jettawreck said:
How much history do you have on the car?
I have to agree (much as I don't want to) that it well may be from a prior "event".
Since you intend to pull the head anyways the forensic process may reveal something presently going on or from a distant past. Post up what you find (or don't find).

About 35,000 miles in the last two years is my history. Will be interesting to see what’s in the top sides.

I do know the history of the ownership of the car. Was a company car for the first part of its life. Met the guy who managed it. The local Euro car place told him that the car wasn’t worth working on anymore at 150,000. Now that I see this I wonder if that was an event. Broken timing belt and they gave the car up or something along those lines. Hmm.

Will report back tomorrow.

Genesis · Nov 27, 2019

Yeah, I bet you find some evidence of that.....

300D · Nov 27, 2019

Alright. Update and of course more questions.

First, when pulling off the head. Two head bolts between cylinders three and four were loose. Which explains a bunch of my on going issues. No idea why I didn't check this.

Three and Four cylinders were very oily and a tiny bit of coolant evident. Here is a picture immediately upon removal:

Spent a little bit of time getting started on cleaning the block:

All the cylinders looked fine except for cylinder number 4:

How bad is this marks/scoring? Why are there marks horizontally? My theory is that maybe there was an event, like we are guessing, which caused the horizontal marks, they fixed everything else up and just went about their way?

Should I start a new thread? as this really is no longer about metal chunks...

Mongler98 · Nov 27, 2019

#4 looks ok ish. As long as it has good compression. Your fine. If you cant feel them with a fingernail your fine. Otherwise your pulling that piston and doing a supper light hone just to take the ridge off and put new rings on that one. Looks ok to me from here though.
A warped head will have loss bolts like that sometimes. Looks like your sending our head out, unless the po used the old bolts and that's the reason. I would speck the head and deck of the block with a lapped straightedge and feeler gauges.

300D · Nov 27, 2019

Mongler98 said:
#4 looks ok ish. As long as it has good compression. Your fine. If you cant feel them with a fingernail your fine. Otherwise your pulling that piston and doing a supper light hone just to take the ridge off and put new rings on that one. Looks ok to me from here though.
A warped head will have loss bolts like that sometimes. Looks like your sending our head out, unless the po used the old bolts and that's the reason. I would speck the head and deck of the block with a lapped straightedge and feeler gauges.

Thanks for the response.

I couldn't do a compression test as the glow plug hole was bunged.

I can feel the horizontal marks, but not the vertical ones.

How involved is it to pull the piston? I already have the pan off as I found metal chunks yesterday and wanted to have a thorough look-see under there before going further. I did find a cir-clip like piece of metal in the pickup screen as well. About 3/4" diameter round, but opened up a bit. Maybe from a piston? Again, engine runs perfectly fine except for smoke at startup, running a bit hot under load, and needing about a cup of coolant every 500 miles.

I am putting a different head on. I have a pretty nice used engine that I am planning on just swapping the head over from. That head is off already and looks great and is dead flat. Actually the cylinders look better in the spare. Engine swap in November outside wasn't on my priority list though... But maybe it should be?

300D · Nov 27, 2019

My brilliant plan was to pop over the extra cylinder head from my spare engine, then run that combo until the bottom end in the car needed refreshing, then sending out the head at that point for a redo so it can go back on to the spare and then into car for the next 400,000 miles.

I think this is where I put a quote about good plans gone awry...

jokila · Dec 2, 2019

300D said:
My brilliant plan was to pop over the extra cylinder head from my spare engine, then run that combo until the bottom end in the car needed refreshing, then sending out the head at that point for a redo so it can go back on to the spare and then into car for the next 400,000 miles.

I think this is where I put a quote about good plans gone awry...

I don't think that it's just that simple. You would want to replace the #2 piston/rod from the donor engine because they should be paired up with same weighted assemblies. I am going from memory of which one #4 is paired up with. Anyway, I don't think you can assume they are exactly the same in both engines.

I read your other thread so it's now a moot point since you are doing an engine swap, but I wanted to make a point in case anyone else would consider the same solution.

300D · Dec 3, 2019

jokila said:
I don't think that it's just that simple. You would want to replace the #2 piston/rod from the donor engine because they should be paired up with same weighted assemblies. I am going from memory of which one #4 is paired up with. Anyway, I don't think you can assume they are exactly the same in both engines.
I read your other thread so it's now a moot point since you are doing an engine swap, but I wanted to make a point in case anyone else would consider the same solution.

I am a bit confused by this. You are saying that pistons need to be swapped when changing heads?
I have two engines. One in the car which we will call Engine A. One in the shed which we will call Engine B. My original plan was to install the head from Engine B onto Engine A. You are saying that to do this I would have to do something to the bottom end too?
With the discovery of issues with the bottom half of Engine A my plan has changed. I am going to be reassembling Engine B and then installing Engine B into the car. I won't exactly be 'blueprinting' Engine B, but I will be replacing the front and rear main seals, the head gasket, the cam seal, the fuel injectors with new washers, the vac pump seal, all the timing bolts, all the clutch and flywheel bolts, the engine mounts, coolant hard pipe seal, turbo oil line, and all manifold gaskets. That is what I can think of off the top of my head at the moment.
Will keep posting. Current weather is a nasty storm.

jokila · Dec 3, 2019

300D said:
I am a bit confused by this. You are saying that pistons need to be swapped when changing heads?
I have two engines. One in the car which we will call Engine A. One in the shed which we will call Engine B. My original plan was to install the head from Engine B onto Engine A. You are saying that to do this I would have to do something to the bottom end too?
With the discovery of issues with the bottom half of Engine A my plan has changed. I am going to be reassembling Engine B and then installing Engine B into the car. I won't exactly be 'blueprinting' Engine B, but I will be replacing the front and rear main seals, the head gasket, the cam seal, the fuel injectors with new washers, the vac pump seal, all the timing bolts, all the clutch and flywheel bolts, the engine mounts, coolant hard pipe seal, turbo oil line, and all manifold gaskets. That is what I can think of off the top of my head at the moment.
Will keep posting. Current weather is a nasty storm.

I understood before you decided to swap engines you were going to replace the #4 piston/rod assembly from a donor engine. I was remarking that you would want to also swap out the #2 piston assembly at the same time. They are balanced together. If I understand it correctly, there are some differences in their weights across different engines so you want to keep the pairs balanced by changing them as a set.

You can disregard it since you are changing engines.

My point was in case you were

wonneber · Dec 3, 2019

I think I would use the entire replacement engine after seeing the original block.
Most I would do (internally) is rings, bearings, valve job (all new springs, valves & guides).
Maybe oil pump depending on mileage & internal condition.

Name those metal chunks?

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