Bottom of oil pan.
Largest fragment.
Typical fragments.
Hi everyone, i just dropped the oil pan to replace the gasket and rod bearings (due to oil leak and knocking). With this much metal found in the oil pan, would replacing the rod bearings even do anything?? Or will the new bearings just get destroyed right away?? I just want to know if i should even bother proceeding with replacing the bearings.

The shavings are soft and non-magnetic so im assuming they are from the aluminum alloy rod bearings (hence the engine knocking). This is a 2004 x type 3.0 with 135K miles. Any advice would be appreciated, thanks.

See pictures for metal shavings.

 

gkubrak, this is a loaded question and you have to ask yourself the following questions:

1) is the car worth the time and effort (or cost) to make the repair?
2) do you have the ability to do the repair yourself to make things more economically realistic?
3) assuming that you do repair the bearings, how confident will you be in being able to say that you got all the metal shavings out of the block to prevent something like this happening again in the near future?

From my point of view, if you can take the car off of the road for a period of time and use a secondary car, you could rebuild the motor for relatively little money (say $1000 or so, rebuild kit, new bearings, and a little in the way of anything that was found that is not anticipated). But, you are doing a lot of wrench turning yourself to get it done for that money. The other option is to find a good used engine and have a shop (or yourself) drop into the car. The motor can most likely be had for around $1500. Figure a shop is going to hit you for another $1500 to drop in the motor.

 

I took a look at your pictures and one of them tells me the engine is not worth rebuilding at.
The pictures of the small pieces may be bearing debris or any other of pieces of metal from from another source.
The troubling one is the large curled piece. That has been physically machined/scraped off by something rotating against a very heavy aluminum surface. Most likely the engine block.
The piece definitely did not come out from between a bearing.
I would advise looking for either a used or rebuilt engine and change it out.

 

I'd say your engine is coming apart; replacing rod bearing is a waste of money. If you like the car Plan A is searching for a used engine. Plan B (more expensive) would be to yank your engine out and do a complete rebuild. Plan C: call local wrecking yard and have them come get it.

 

The large curly bit of metal looks like machining swarf, maybe the engine block wasn't cleaned out properly after it was machined. It would be interesting to find out exactly what metal the shavings are and whether it is the same metal as the engine block and not the bearing shells.

Cheers,
Jeff.

 

Thanks for your feedback everyone.






I will be proceeding with the rod bearing replacement for 3 reasons:
1.) The pan is already off and I have easy access to them
2.) The bearings are cheap enough to replace
3.) I do not have expertise nor finances to replace the engine right now


I'm hoping the new bearings will prolong life for at least a few more months while I find a permanent solution. If not, ill be out $200 tops, no big deal.




Thanks again for the feedback.

 

Looks to me the engine had a chip in there from the factory, I would
just go ahead and replace the bearings, you might be lucky enough
to make it last another 50k.

Walter

 

Hi. I appreciate your problem and agree with your decision, what intrigues me is why your engine is knocking after only 135,000 miles. These engines usually go on for much longer. Do you have any idea? Inferior oil perhaps! The only problem you may have as I see it is that the "big end" journals may be oval and knock the new bearings out.

 

If your engine continues or starts again to knock after you replace the bearing inserts, and all you need is "a few more months while I find a permanent solution", consider raising the viscosity of the lubrication to the point where the knocking finally stops or subsides.

Example given: drain a quart or two of oil out of the pan, and top it off with a "Motor Honey" or STP-type "viscosity enhancer". I've known people to go as much as 50%/50% mix with the stuff, and keep their various vehicles on the road for "a few more months" as you are seeking.

If the knock starts coming back to excess with that kind of crap in the oil pan, all is not lost even then: add a hand-full or two of the finest hardwood sawdust you can get (preferably from a sander bag). That will likely tide you over until you swap the engine out.

Rude and crude? oh, yes.
Effective? you betchya.

Best of luck with the inserts, you might just get lucky and all will be well for many more miles.

(be sure to throw a half-dozen of those powerful Hard Disk Drive magnets in the bottom of the oil pan before you button it back up, too!)

// seeing that the ruler in the photos looks like one of the finest Machinists Ruler available (likely a Starrett?), this might be against your religion. In that case, just let someone else pour the sawdust into the engine.

 

Hi, something similar happened to me. My car start knocking 3 days after I bought the car, I was not ready to start looking for another engine so I replace the rod bearings. I had to replace 2 set of bearings, the others were fine. There was some aluminum shavings in the pan (just like picture 1) I plastigauge the bearings to make sure that the tolerance was ok and change the oil and filter 3 times (removing the pan each time) to catch any other shaving. So far I have drove for 8,000 miles and 1 1/2 year and so far is good. Maybe my approach was not the right one, most likely I will need an engine sooner or later but so far is working. Is an extra car so I think I can gamble with that. Good Luck.

 

Cylinder #6. Worst one of all.

So i eneded up replacing all of the bearings. The one above was the worst one. 3 others look similar and 2 were ok.

Bruce, i have been adding a thickening agent at every oil change since the knocking started (about 15000 miles ago haha). And yes, as an engineer i cant see myself adding sawdust anytime soon! Since the shavings are aluminum-tin alloy i dont see how the magnets would help.

Dunks, the knock comes from a combo of low oil due to pan gasket leak as well as my own stupidity red-lining the car after a long trip and not topping off the oil.

Thanks again for the feedback. As soon as i get the pan back on ill post the procedure i used for anyone else looking to do the job. Ill let you guys know how it sounds then.

-gkubrak
2004 X-Type 3.0
135,000 miles

 

Hi Thanks for the reply.
I bet she will be OK now. You came very close to putting a rod through the side there!

Sawdust brings to mind the old days when we used to do this before taking dodgy motors to the auctions. A nylon stocking in the gearbox worked wonders too.
This was in the 1950s. Seems an awful long time ago .
Best of luck with yours.

 

Wow! How much forward and backward slop did the crankshaft have?

 

Crankshaft was surprisingly in good condition. Not much play at that I could notice. Although it was pretty cold once I got in there so it was tough to tell.


I'll have pics of the journals and rod surfaces once I put the procedure together.


-gkubrak

 

Any idea what could cause something like that? This is something we typically don't see posted here. Generally the engines are pretty stout.

Hope this works out fir you.

 

Thanks Alfadude, I posted above the reason for the engine knocking and bearing damage.

I'm happy to say replacing the bearings made the knocking go away. For how long? Who knows, but for now I'm happy to have the job done.

I posted the write-up here:
https://www.jaguarforums.com/forum/x...ite-up-178153/