I’m afraid to ask this one…

drained the break in oil after putting about 180 miles on it. At the end of my last drive the oil pressure dropped pretty low while sitting at idle, low enough to turn the light on. While driving it seemed to follow the RPM, 2 bars at 2000 rpm. After seeing the low pressure light I drove it softly home about 10 miles away.

I immediately dropped the oil and didn’t really see anything of concern, small smear of fuzz on the magnet cut the filter and found some small bits of metal, non ferrous. Went back to the oil pan and realized it has a golden swirl… lots of tiny bits of glitter suspended in the oil.

I wish I’d taken some pics but didn’t… and I’m on the road for the next few days…

I’ve read where some metal in the oil is normal during break in. I also saw a post from Charles N. That he’s never seen glitter except in rod bearing failures… tracked cars and shops cranking the motor over trying to build pressure after a rebuild. I did neither.

it’s running like a champ, no issues whatsoever (now that I got the fuel trims sorted). I did drive it after the oil change and pressure stayed much higher on the new oil, I used driven HR1

my thought is to drive it another 100 miles and pull the filter again, if metals are found drop the oil and pan to start the investigation.

thoughts?

Engine info-

fresh rebuild with nickies
new connecting rods
new rings/pistons
All bearings replaced


oil was driven BR

 

You mention fuel trims. Was it seeing excess fuel for some period of time?

 

They we’re pretty wonky for the first drive. 50 miles. Discovered a small vacuum leak, fixed that, did another handover and they were good. I just upgraded the fuel injectors to the 996.2 versions and the trims are spot on.

but there was no fuel smell to the oil, I don’t know if the 50 miles would cause any harm. The CEL never came on.

 

Take an oil sample and send it to Oilvue , they do a "PQI test" that can detect ferrous metal particles above 10 microns that other tests can't see.

Don't panic until you have concrete evidence..it will solve nothing....and if there is a problem with metal in the oil there is nothing you can do except "lick the calf all over again"..

It's true that during break-in you have excess metal particles in the oil, and some oils have so many additives that they can have a metallic look if in direct sunlight..

Take a big shot of good Brandy and wait for the test results/evidence.....

 

Haha! You must know exactly how I feel. It’s been a few days since I found it so Ive been through all 5 phases of the grieving process. It brought on great ideas like blowing it up, LS swap, part it out, drive it off a cliff…

I’ve only got 15 or so miles on the fresh oil, is it safe to continue driving? Is that enough time on the oil for a sample?

thanks for your input!!!

 

What Porschetech3 said. Keep breathing. Wait for empirical evidence.

 

The fact you are saying it’s got low oil pressure would bother me more than a little metal on the initial oil change.

 

yeah, that’s got me perplexed. I’d been driving it “hard” for me as part of the break in. By hard I mean accelerations up to 4500 and engine braking. I drive like an old man. This was on the break in oil, so when it happened I just thought maybe the oil had reached the end of its life, I know you’re not supposed to run it for long but I didn’t know if the LOP was a result of the oil reaching the end of its life.

like I said earlier, the HR1 gave me great pressure, 4-5 bars.

I was thinking maybe the metal could be from oil pump cavitation. At least that’s something simple to check…

I think I’ll put a few more miles on it and check the filter and send a sample out.

 

I agree with putting some more miles on it - if it were me, I’d be paying really close attention to the oil pressure gauge. If clearances are opening - it’s going to tell you.

Good luck man.

 

If you used BR30, it's possible if the engine oil got hot that the oil pressure was indeed low. If you didn't replace the pressure relief at time of rebuild to put in the updated 997 piston and spring, I would do that.

If the oil pressure issue resolved itself when you put in the fresh oil, you're probably fine. I would only be concerned if you still have hot idle oil pressure issues which I have seen before when someone accidently leaves a piston squirter (or two) out.

 

Was the oil pil presure issue just a blip or sustained? Maybe its just the connection at the sender a a failing sender? Did u change it with the rebuild? Other thing to check is a sticking pressure valve in the filter housing.

 

I had an actuator fail recently because a little green/yellow rubber seal got brittle and fell apart. It presented as brightly-colored little flecks in the oil filter - might've looked a bit like glitter? I had a check engine light that pointed me to the problem, however.

Good luck!

 

Thanks Charles. It was in fact BR30. I didn’t replace/upgrade the oil relief piston or spring, I’ll get that coming.

This was the only drive I did without the Durametric running, so I don’t know what the oil temp was. The water temp was slightly above 180, not by much, however on previous drives it never budged from 180.

Also the first couple of drives I couldn’t get the oil temp above 87 driving hard but this drive was probably the most aggressive. After the oil change, press was great and oil temp was right at 80 with just normal driving. Having said that, I don’t recall letting it idle much but the water temp was back to exactly 180.

 

I think your oil temp might be reading *C?

80*C = 176*F

 

it was just a couple of blips. The pressure really did follow the rpm. At idle it was just below the 1 bar line a small blip of the throttle and the light would go out, press would go up above 1 bar. Then while driving at 2000 rpm I had 2 bars, 3000 rpm 3 bars, that’s about as hard as I went on the few miles home.

I didn’t change the sender.