KrazyK

Jr, please dont bail on us just because of some of the comments. My M96 knowledge inceases everytime you post. I hope one day you wil consider selling some of your mods in kit form for DIY'ers.

70Sixter

That is my engine. Jake has been great. He said to park the car after oil analysis showed copper and aluminum. Fortunately I did. Two more analyses confirmed bearing wear. Followed by tear down, repair, replacements, and upgrades.
Thank you Jake!

Flat6 Innovations

70Sixter,
The car is done.. 450 test miles, perfect performance.. And an IMS Solution is now installed :-)

Ahsai

Thanks for letting us know and glad to hear Jake caught it in time. What were the copper and aluminum levels before the teardown?b TIA

Flat6 Innovations

Low to mid 20s. We got lucky, I've never been able to save an engine from a UOA before.

Ahsai

Thanks, Jake. Was the aluminum level also at low to mid 20s as well or just the copper?

KrazyK

Ahsai, why dont you just pull a sample every 1 or 2K to see whats going on? Did you flush and switch to JG?

Ahsai

KK, I plan to do that in 3k. Maybe a shorter oil change interval will help. No, I have not tried DT40 yet. Will wait for the next uoa first. Engine is quiet, smooth and strong so not too concerned for now.

Flat6 Innovations

So was Mike's. There are times when fixing something that isn't broken (yet) is the smart thing to do. One thing is for sure, it won't heal it's self and it won't go away. If your UOA is accurate, you have a problem and you better find it, before it finds you.

Ahsai

Jake, how much will I save if I rebuild it now as opposed to later when and if it blows up?

Flat6 Innovations

Thats impossible to answer accurately.. BUT right now your situation is just a repair and its elective. At minimum you are saving tow bills and the reality that something always happens when you both don't expect it and when its least convenient.

When this happens I do know that the cost of admission increases by around 4-6K since the whole core gets thrown away.


Once wear starts the clearances open, the oil pressure drops (resistance to flow is reduced) and then its a snowball headed to hell. Mike was really, really lucky.

Ahsai

Thanks Jake. When you say "just a repair", we need to split the case to fix the bearings, right? I would assume that's no different than doing a full rebuild since most likely there will be lots of "while we are there" stuff to replace. As you said before, you don't rebuild engines, you reconstruct them. So practically the worst difference is basically the core. Is my understanding correct? Thanks again.

Flat6 Innovations

No one knows the definition of "rebuild". To me it means sloppy procedures and going back together with marginal components.
We did not rebuild or reconstruct Mike's engine because it just needed a repair and it saved him a ton of money. We replaced a lot of parts while we were in there..
Mike's car had less than 50k miles so it didn't need everything that we do. We saved him a ton of cash.

Considering what we see, just receiving an engine that's able to run under its own power when it arrives here is a special occurrence. Dealing with something before it breaks is a privilege. We are proficient enough to tear the entire engine down, repair it and put it all back together and test it inside of one week. No one else you'll talk to will give you this option, because they will lose tons of money doing the work, because they lack capability and proficiency at this level.

pfbz

OK.... just to get this straight.

A perfectly running engine with moderately elevated copper values reported on a mail-in oil analysis is doomed... Just waiting for the con-rods to come crashing through the engine block.

Flat6 Innovations

If those elevated values are real, the rod bearings will continue to wear. At that point the engine will have a notable symptom but if action is not taken the rod bolts can easily break and send a rod through the block as a worst case scenario.

Mike had no symptoms at all other than his UOA and then when the car arrived here we did more UOA (wear metals were up 12% even with only 500 mi on the oil) and a visual inspection of the oil sump and filter that did not yield any findings. We worked on his car off and on for a month before we made a hypothesis and started taking it apart. The root of his evil started with camshaft lobe wear that then spread through the engine.