Glitter in oil

[DFERA]

Did you try to pick up the glitter with a strong magnet?

No I didn't, but when I sent the oil off for the used oil analysis, and nothing came out on the magnet.

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[DFERA]

Only had time to go thru the passenger side cams
Thoughts?

 

[sk47]

Hello; Cams and caps show some lite scoring at least. Can you feel the surface or catch a fingernail on the slight marks?

Post #135 with pictures of a main cap is the more disturbing of all. A suspicion is the glitter is from the sides of that bearing and that material has been circulating for a while. Take these conjectures with many grains of salt to use an old saying.

The crank looks good in the pictures if I recall correctly. Nice and smooth with no scoring, I think.

I think an oil analysis is yet to come. Perhaps ponder the situation until that comes.

I am a few hundred miles from you and only looking at pictures so at best cannot have a good feel for the situation. Perhaps someone with actual experience on these engines might chime in. The look of the cams and cam caps may not be very unusual. May be acceptable wear for what I know, but I am suspicious. I do not have experience directly with these engines.

I do think you could button the engine back up and run it again. No idea how long it may go.

I can see the bearings in the caps being replaced but have never tried to push out a bearing from between the crank and the block. I have red-necked replacing connecting rod bearings after my first engine rebuild. I made an error when assembling the engine and got grit in one connecting rod cap. After 800 miles I had a knock. It was a straight six Chevy and i could get the oil pan off & out. For a few times I put in new bearings to get another few hundred miles down the road. Finally sapped a used small block V8 in.

Again good luck.

 

[DFERA]

Hello; Cams and caps show some lite scoring at least. Can you feel the surface or catch a fingernail on the slight marks?

Post #135 with pictures of a main cap is the more disturbing of all. A suspicion is the glitter is from the sides of that bearing and that material has been circulating for a while. Take these conjectures with many grains of salt to use an old saying.

The crank looks good in the pictures if I recall correctly. Nice and smooth with no scoring, I think.

I think an oil analysis is yet to come. Perhaps ponder the situation until that comes.

I am a few hundred miles from you and only looking at pictures so at best cannot have a good feel for the situation. Perhaps someone with actual experience on these engines might chime in. The look of the cams and cam caps may not be very unusual. May be acceptable wear for what I know, but I am suspicious. I do not have experience directly with these engines.

I do think you could button the engine back up and run it again. No idea how long it may go.

I can see the bearings in the caps being replaced but have never tried to push out a bearing from between the crank and the block. I have red-necked replacing connecting rod bearings after my first engine rebuild. I made an error when assembling the engine and got grit in one connecting rod cap. After 800 miles I had a knock. It was a straight six Chevy and i could get the oil pan off & out. For a few times I put in new bearings to get another few hundred miles down the road. Finally sapped a used small block V8 in.

Again good luck.

Cam caps #3, and # 8catch my finger nail the others do not.

 

[sk47]

Hello; That the scoring catches a fingernail is not good. Since my take is the cams, caps and the head itself do not have replaceable bearings, then it appears you are looking at new heads. I do hope this is not the final word on this particular bit of your troubles.

Another problem will be cleaning out all the debris which will be thru-out the engine.

Take a few days to get as much information as you can. Do not put too much faith in such as me on a forum.

 

[GregO]

Only had time to go thru the passenger side cams
Thoughts?

Looks like 60k miles of normal use. It’s soft aluminum so take that into account.

 

[sk47]

Looks like 60k miles of normal use. It’s soft aluminum so take that into account.

Hello; Let me say first thing that i cannot refute your claim. I do not know what 60K miles wear in the Coyote head cams is normal. That the wear can be "normal" to the point of scratches that catch a fingernail seems disturbing. If indeed normal wear Such would appear to indicate these cams & heads will not make a lot of miles overall.

I do not dispute that aluminum is softer than iron. I restored a 1963 Oldsmobile Cutlass (F-85) in the late 1980-early 90's. Had the 215 cu in aluminum engine. I bought five junkyard engines to get good parts. One issue was the coolant had eroded aluminum parts. I may be mistaken but think antifreeze no longer has things like silicates in it to accommodate the now common aluminum blocks.
Modern aluminum alloys are better than back in 1961 to 1963. Stronger and more wear resistant. I think British-Leyland bought the rights to that 215 V8 and used it in many vehicles for a long time. But this has little to do with the engine in question in this thread.

I confess to not knowing how serious the glitter in the oil might be. Such was a red flag in my past experience. Usually indicated some of the brass bearing material had been worn away excessively. The pictures appear to confirm that such happened. Let me say again I am guessing from a distance.

Back to your contention that this is "normal wear". We likely are on the same page in an odd way. My overall concern is the glitter has been circulating thru the engine and the damage has already happened to some degree. That since the cam journals in the head are already scored and do not have replaceable bearings, the heads are not likely to be good to reuse in a rebuild.
If, as you say, the wear and glitter is normal then the OP can button up the engine and drive away.
If, by my thinking, enough damage is potentially already started then driving it as is may not make much difference. A caveat is some parts, maybe the crank & block, are not yet beyond reuse in a rebuild right now.
Only way to find out for sure is to pull and tear down the engine. Do that and might as well do a rebuild. A dilemma for the OP. This is a sad situation as the car is so recently purchased by the OP.

 

[Coosawjack]

Gold "Glitter" will not be magnetic and for some reason I remember a "Moly Break In Oil Additive" I used in a 408 Windsor Stroker we built.........it had Gold Flakes in it as well!!

Hopefully you will find everything is OK with what little wear I see so far........"Thrust Bearing" surfaces are supposed to wear like yours......they fight the crankshaft's forward movement every time you depress the clutch!!

GOOD LUCK!!

 

[GregO]

Hello; Let me say first thing that i cannot refute your claim. I do not know what 60K miles wear in the Coyote head cams is normal. That the wear can be "normal" to the point of scratches that catch a fingernail seems disturbing. If indeed normal wear Such would appear to indicate these cams & heads will not make a lot of miles overall.

I do not dispute that aluminum is softer than iron. I restored a 1963 Oldsmobile Cutlass (F-85) in the late 1980-early 90's. Had the 215 cu in aluminum engine. I bought five junkyard engines to get good parts. One issue was the coolant had eroded aluminum parts. I may be mistaken but think antifreeze no longer has things like silicates in it to accommodate the now common aluminum blocks.
Modern aluminum alloys are better than back in 1961 to 1963. Stronger and more wear resistant. I think British-Leyland bought the rights to that 215 V8 and used it in many vehicles for a long time. But this has little to do with the engine in question in this thread.

I confess to not knowing how serious the glitter in the oil might be. Such was a red flag in my past experience. Usually indicated some of the brass bearing material had been worn away excessively. The pictures appear to confirm that such happened. Let me say again I am guessing from a distance.

Back to your contention that this is "normal wear". We likely are on the same page in an odd way. My overall concern is the glitter has been circulating thru the engine and the damage has already happened to some degree. That since the cam journals in the head are already scored and do not have replaceable bearings, the heads are not likely to be good to reuse in a rebuild.
If, as you say, the wear and glitter is normal then the OP can button up the engine and drive away.
If, by my thinking, enough damage is potentially already started then driving it as is may not make much difference. A caveat is some parts, maybe the crank & block, are not yet beyond reuse in a rebuild right now.
Only way to find out for sure is to pull and tear down the engine. Do that and might as well do a rebuild. A dilemma for the OP. This is a sad situation as the car is so recently purchased by the OP.

The UOA is key in all this.
All my Monopoly money is on some oil additive anomaly (my guess is high zinc)
As far as the cam caps, there is a reason I have a history of advocating 0W-XX oils. The distance from oil sump pick up to the cam journal bores is a long distance, the oil need to arrive at those soft aluminum cam bores ASAP.

 

[sk47]

The distance from oil sump pick up to the cam journal bores is a long distance, the oil need to arrive at those soft aluminum cam bores ASAP.

Hello; Not to sidetrack the thread too much but was watching a TV car show. The engine needed to have the oil circulated before they fired it up. It was a modern ford engine if memory serves. The claim made was to floor the gas pedal then turn the key and Engauge the starter to crank the engine. They claim the computer will prevent the injectors from squirting fuel with the gas pedal floored. The engine will turn over. They did this on the show. I have not tried such.

 

[DFERA]

Hello; Not to sidetrack the thread too much but was watching a TV car show. The engine needed to have the oil circulated before they fired it up. It was a modern ford engine if memory serves. The claim made was to floor the gas pedal then turn the key and Engauge the starter to crank the engine. They claim the computer will prevent the injectors from squirting fuel with the gas pedal floored. The engine will turn over. They did this on the show. I have not tried such.

I think I just saw that too. Was it on YouTube tho??

 

[GregO]

Hello; Not to sidetrack the thread too much but was watching a TV car show. The engine needed to have the oil circulated before they fired it up. It was a modern ford engine if memory serves. The claim made was to floor the gas pedal then turn the key and Engauge the starter to crank the engine. They claim the computer will prevent the injectors from squirting fuel with the gas pedal floored. The engine will turn over. They did this on the show. I have not tried such.

I don’t think it matters if the motor fires up or not just the rotation of the starter motor turning the cams in the aluminum bearingless bores is enough to cause wear without the oil getting to the top end in milliseconds.

 

[Hack]

Only had time to go thru the passenger side cams
Thoughts?

There are not supposed to be particles going through the bearing journals. They look toast to me based on engine teardowns I've seen on YouTube. The cam lobes even look bad to me with the scratches going around them. But I've never had an overhead cam engine apart myself. Whether it would be fine to run after the source of the contamination is cleaned up? I wouldn't, but maybe?

 

[HoosierDaddy]

Hello; Not to sidetrack the thread too much but was watching a TV car show. The engine needed to have the oil circulated before they fired it up. It was a modern ford engine if memory serves. The claim made was to floor the gas pedal then turn the key and Engauge the starter to crank the engine. They claim the computer will prevent the injectors from squirting fuel with the gas pedal floored. The engine will turn over. They did this on the show. I have not tried such.

That's what I always do after I change the oil in my GT. Only let it start after pressure registers.

 

[GregO]

There are not supposed to be particles going through the bearing journals. They look toast to me based on engine teardowns I've seen on YouTube. The cam lobes even look bad to me with the scratches going around them. But I've never had an overhead cam engine apart myself. Whether it would be fine to run after the source of the contamination is cleaned up? I wouldn't, but maybe?

I do think there is merit in taking consideration to what modern digital cameras highlight and the uploading of those images. It’s a crap shoot looking at online pix vs inspecting with the naked eye and proper inspection lighting. I know LED lighting can and does create illusion and shadows that can trick the human eye. I’ve seen this with quality medical grade borescopes for inspection purposes especially on reflective surfaces.

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