Yummybud924

to answer the questions:

I started my car to warm in up in January. I always let the car idle until it warms up like 5-10 mintues while i'm finishing breakfast. So anyways this time I quickly started the car didn't hear any strange sounds so I left the car running in the garage and came back like 5-10 minutes later to hear the engine sounding like its killing itself, lifters going crazy so I shut it off and investigated and what happened was that the oprv bushing which is a metal sleeve that goes into the block had come loose from the block and I had to reglue a new one into the block (loctit 574 or something).


anyways since then oil pressure has been good. I have been driving the car hard since this with 5w50 syntec. when my oprv failed and was idling with no oil pressure i had mobil 15w50 in there with a KN oil filter.

when I drained the mobil one out there were no visible metal in the oil. then I put in conventional oil in there and drained it again and no metal again. so I fixed the problem and filled up with castrol syntec 5w50 and it seemed fine.

its been 6 months since I lost oil pressure but only about 3500-4000 kms since then. estimate as I broke my odometer recently. I've driven it hard, on the highway reving it up to 5k rpm sometims but usually in the 2-3k rpm range when curising.

I think my top end of the motor is a bit more noisy than before but not sure.

so this is the first real oil change since the oprv failure other than the two time I filled and drained the oil right after the incident to check for metal.

when I changed my oil to mobil 15w50 again yesterday I left the old filter because I switched to a new filter a month ago before this oil change because I was getting 1-2 seconds before building oil pressure on startup in the mornings and wondered if it was a bad filter.

also today I bought an installed one of those magnets that attach to your oil filter. I dont' have a drain plug I have installed a drain valve for easier oil changes a year ago.

yeah since the 3-4k kms since the incident with no pressure idling the engine still fire up and runs without knocking or anything and oil pressure is up at 5 bar on startup but my top end does seem a bit noisy but I think that is also due to a header gasket leak cus i tightened one of the bolts and the noise is less.

however yesterday there was a lot of metla shavings in the oil dran pan so i'm pretty sure the motor is sel destructing very soon.

Will Feather

Sell it, dosnt seem like your 944 is reliable enough to be your DD to school. And it dosnt seem you have the know how, time, or space to work on it yourself.

Yummybud924

actually i'm only in school until december then I'm graduating so no more school.

and this car has been my daily driver for 3 years now.

and I do have the know how for most things but an engine swap is a little too much for me to tackle by myself. I have done almost all the repairs on the car myself thus far.

selling it, i wouldn't get much money back. there's a ton of new parts on the car.

Will Feather

Didnt mean to come off as a dick but I know what its like. My 944 was my DD but then I learned and got my Jeep.

To really get your car done, wheter it needs a new motor or just bearings, you would need to have some time to work on it, and another car to drive.

gricec

You say you still have good oil pressure.

Surely it cannot be that bad.

i think you worry too much

944Ross

+1 on that... if it ain't broke, don't fix it!
-- Run heavy oil
-- put a magnet drain plug on it (note that lead/tin babbitt is non-magnetic -- if it catches anything it isn't bearings)
-- go to church regularly

carlege

the church this is optional depending of the brand of religion you subscribe to

Yummybud924

well i'm not religious so maybe i'm getting punished lol.

yes I seem to have normal oil pressure. except for the fact that when the car sits for like 12 hours overnight in the morning when I start it up there is no oil pressure for 2 seconds or so and then it jumps to 5 bar and stays there until it warms up and is driven and slowly comes down to like 2 bar idle.

however when I start the car even after sitting for 5 hours the oil pressure instantly goes to 5 bar, weird how it takes 2-3 seconds after a 12 hour sit overnight to get oil pressure.

Yummybud924

I don't have a drain plug but a valve for easy oil changes.

I did buy a magnet for my oil filter which attaches to the top and is probably useless but I bought one anyways.

and the metallic crap I had in my oil wasn't really magnetic because I stuck a maget in the oil and it wasn't really sticking except some small shavings so I was worried thats all my bearings in the oil.

but like I said in my other post I also found a green pebble looking thing in the drain pan which couldn't ahve come out of my engine. I used a suction gun to suck out the oil from the drain pan and into bottles after I drained it out of the engine so I was wonderiing if some crap in the suction gun got into the pan.

right after my oil pressure propblem I drain the oil twice right after and there were no metal shavings in the oil at all. this is 4000 kms after it ran without oil pressure.

guess thnere is one wa to find out, just drive it until I get knocking sound......


I was going to bring the car in for a timing belt retension and stud replacment but I cancelled that and now i'm tensioning the timing belt by hand/ kricket because didn't want to pay to get the belt retensioned on a motor that might blow up soon.

joonas

Rod bearing does not warn you it comes knockin.

I was driving normal speed on the road when engine lost power and oil presure was little lower. After a while I heard knocking. When engine was cooled down I could run engine without knocking at idle but when reving you could hear it. Oil pressure was 5 bar at idle when cold.

Best bet would be oil analysis or if you see bearing material there is a time for rebuild.

M758

The only way to check is to pull the bearings. Rod bearing material is not magnetic and sounds like you wore them down. Hard to say how much your clearance are now, but they are probabyl wide open. So if you run the motor hot and hard you will probably spin a bearing. However you could also get by for a while.

Yummybud924

maybe I'll drain the oil again in 2 months if the car is still running and check again for metal shavings.

Yummybud924

i'm not going to bother to take the pan off because if it is bearings then i'm not going to rebuild this engine I'd rather get a good running motor and get it swapped.

if the rod bearings were damaged and metal was circulating throughout the engine i'd be worried that the rest of the motor is also damaged and I don't think just replacing rod bearings and main bearings would ensure that it will be reliable.

buying a used motor is risky also because I don't knwo if it was trashed

M758

I would not worry about that too much. You already have been driving it so major problems are not likely to happen. Heck if you just "wore down" the rob bearings you can replace them with the engine in and be fine. Parts will cost under $200 for bearings and pan gasket. Once you decided to do the mains the engine needs to come out and they leads to more cost since "while you are inthere" gets to go. Doing it youselft with nothing crazy and it will cost $1500 easy.

BTW... I have had rod bearing failures and even clean-up after them. Once you have bearing failure you need to check the crank and that means engine removeal, but simple bearing wear means just fresh bearings assuming no wear on the crank.

Yummybud924

so are you saying if my rods are toast when I idled the car for 5-10 minutes with no pressure the main bearings should still be fine? I would assume if the rod bearings wore down then the mains also wore out with no pressure so would there be any point in replacing the rods?

I was thinking of taking the pan off like next weekend when I'm off work and doing the rods but what would be the point of that if the main bearings are also toast. I don't want to do all that work to find out the mains are also worn out and the engine has to come out.

also how hard is it to do rod bearings once the pan is off? i've had the pan off before so I can do that for eure.

do the bearings just pop out and new onces go in? do you need any special tools to replace them?

how much would it cost if I pay a shop to replace the rod bearings ?

i don't really feel like doing it myself remember last time I took the pan off it was a ton of work and a real bitch to get everything alligned and back together (motor mounts).