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Car was a daily driver (although I got laid off last year and so I've only been driving it a couple of days a week, typically going 35 miles (down to Point Loma) one day and short 5-10 mile trips around town).
Car has always been garaged.
^I think you are correct. Although, I spoke to a guy just yesterday at our Porsche breakfast who bought a plain Jane 2002 C2 roller for $8,500 and had Raby rebuild the engine. It sounds like was an exceptionally clean roller with only 12,000 miles on the odometer though, so that's probably the higher end.
He got a great deal, but the intermix sat in the cooling system so long that it deteriorated all the hoses. What a mess, I hate it when people do that! Nothing sucks worse than changing every hose in the vehicle!
The material in that oil filter does appear to be from cylinder/ piston wear. If you are going to have a failure, this is the best one to have, because the collateral damage doesn't take out any of the parts that we reuse during a reconstruction. Generally.....
Here's the other two pictures that Black Forest sent me (I'm assuming the is the holder for the oil filter). Not sure if this gives any add'l info on failure mode.
Thats revealing.. See all that copper colored stuff? Thats main and rod bearing material, nothing else in this engine has that material. Also, see the bypass valve at the bottom of the canister? The rocket scientist that designed the filter and housing placed this in just the perfect place for the debris to collect here. Guess what? When the filter bypass opens at start up, all that material you see there has a chance to be force fed AROUND the filter and straight to all the other internals.
Based on that photo alone, this one is disqualified. Time to issue a Death Certificate.
So the obvious question is how could you have prevented the Dr.Kevorkian episode?
Based on my similar experience and current rebuild, what saved my engine was the LN full flow spin on filter. It catches all the debris on the 1 st circulation -not just some of it -like the OEM filter.
Yes, I still had bearing debris in the pan but not much and it had sunk to the bottom of the pan. That debris that got into the circulation system was stopped by the filter so it did not go far enough to cause collateral damage.
Please note this is just my experience of 1 rebuild .The bearing/crank damage was a mild version of what is shown here.
The magnetic sump plug on mine did not collect much because it was almost entirely bearing debris.
The local Porsche Indie(ex-main dealer) pronounced the bearing debris "IMS failed". I doubted it because the car had only a few hundred miles on an LN ceramic bearing.Needless to say he was wrong !The bearing was fine but had to be replaced because of the debris risk.
The rest of the bearing/journal surfaces were O.K. Saved by LN thank you Charles/Jake because this happened 10 days after i bought the car!
I hope this helps others take precautions to avoid what happened to the OP.
I'm extremely interested to hear how this could have been prevented. Jake, as a well respected contributor, perhaps you can shed some light on this situation?
To overview how this could have been prevented, we must first study the fault path. What typically causes this is some debris in the oil that then bypasses the filter and is fed into the main and rod bearings.
This is also what we see from track cars that have killed their oil, and have lost viscosity from this occurrence.
Every failure has a primary source, with several different collateral damages.
Judging from the color of the oil that dripped on the wood can you really say that the debris is copper content or just appears in a really bad photo to have a 'copper' color tint to it?
I have no expertise on what is likely in there or experience with what one sees in the filter housing of dead engines but I'd want to spread that stuff out and dry it off of all oil since the picture of the filter didn't seem to have copper colored debris.
The copper colored debris is made of heavier particles. These settle to the bottom of the filter housing, and are seldom caught in the media of the filter. This is another reason why the OE filter housing is a horrible design, and leads to further failures.
I am not presuming to add to Jake's comments -just thought the following may help:
Regarding the color issue.
Obviously there are other pigmented contaminants in the oil,primarily carbon.These contaminants form a dark sludge with the 'interesting' debris .So that is why sediment is collected, diluted in a solvent(gas is O.K.) ,filtered and the filtrate is then dried on a white paper towel. When dry, you'll think you may have a gold mine in the engine with all the glitter.In my engine failure case, the oil was fresh and the car had been well maintained. So the oil was pale enough to reveal the glitter immediately. The OP has darker oil that is all -it seems.
The OP's photo of the OEM filter appeared to show a lot of white/grey material -which may be part of the story.
Whatever the origin of the path of failure, the debris laden lubricant causes the expensive collateral damage. Hence my enthusiasm for a full flow filter,magnetic sump plug and tracking down new engine noises promptly. Best of all the precautions are cheap and easy diy.
I think regardless of the source of the debris, the engine will have to be completely torn down and cleaned anway. At 100k, new bearings, resleeving, new rings, etc will be easily $5k in parts alone?
My filter looked almost like yours. Maybe 25% less metal in it. As soon as I saw the copper shavings in the sump, it was clear the crankshaft and connecting bearings were coming apart. Cost wise, you are probably better off getting a good used engine because fixing this will not be cheap. Since you can't do the work, it's not worth gambling by trying to spend more money on this engine. Sell it as a core if you can and that will offset the cost of the replacement engine a little.
"$5k in parts"
That is the easy part.
Acquiring the knowledge,skills, tools and equipment is another story....
I had the tools and equipment,arguably the skills for my rebuild but the knowledge to do a competent rebuild is very difficult/expensive to acquire. Justifying all that for one rebuild(well hopefully only one !)is a fools errand. Or an enthusiasts ..
01-18-2015, 05:55 PM
