I have very little oil consumption. I lose about one bar on the oil gauge after 5000 miles leaving two more bars before I would ever need to add more.

Yes,
l know what that is. Give me some time to find some pics this evening to explain it.

I’m busy doing tractor work right now 😎

Wow. You are the man. I never really thought you would see this post with how busy you are. Thanks.

Absolutely. Should I send it to 47 Raby Drive? Hopefully none of those places are really bad places to miss it from. LOL. Thanks.

Coming your way tomorrow, Wizard. LOL

Mr. Wizard,

Did you receive the piece of metal I found in my oil screen in the mail yet? Thanks.

Yes, I have it in my hand now, and will call you within the hour. Just back today after instructing my class all last week.

Here it is!

The piece of FOD that Brian sent in is the smaller piece. The larger piece is the diamond washer from Bronz’s Engine that I have apart. This is from the exhaust camshaft sprocket attachment point. Both pieces are the exact same thickness and material (.004”) and the same material. You can see the broken piece has the same shape and contour as Bronz’s. It’s a little deformed as it has passed between a timing chain and a sprocket. This bent it, and deformed it.

No way to answer these questions... We lack the rest of the story at this point.

This diamond finished washer locks the sprocket onto the retention bolt, and the cam onto the sprockets.

Unless some hack assembler at the factory botched the install, and mis- installed the washer, making it fail, and he just replaced it leaving the broken pieces in the engine, the engine has a broken, or missing diamond washer.

Brian will have to determine if he wants to move forward trying to find the potential broken/ missing piece, or just keep driving the car without worry. We spoke about this at length this evening, and its all up to him.

We have seen the factory break things, and leve the parts in the engine before... No guesses can be made about the chances that this happened, Vs an in- operation failure of the diamond washer.

If any of the cams were to detach from the drives during operation due to this, the engine would suffer instant, catastrophic failure. By the same token, nothing may ever happen...

No one knows anything, except what the material is, and where it came from. Thats conclusive.

So let me first start off by saying that I do not know what I am going to do at this point. There was no other metal or even metallic flakes in the oil filter or pan and nothing on the magnetic drain plug. I have several options that I need to weight the risk/reward and of course talk with my wife.

One thing I do want to point out is how Flat 6 dealt with a situation that they didn’t even need to get involved with. Not only did Jake take the time to respond to the posting, which I never thought he would see, but then took the time to investigate where the part had come from inside the engine after I sent it to him. Bronz helped with this as his engine was readily available at the point of tear down or build up to show with 100% confidence where the metal came from. Jake even posted his reply late last night after I had already gone to bed. I would have never expected this level of customer service for an individual who wasn’t even a customer, yet. Jake and Flat 6 has set a high standard that I have not seen in decades and it makes sense why he has such a stellar reputation. I cannot thank Jake and his team enough for their help.

Happy to help. At the end of the day I like solving problems, and do that no matter if someone is a “customer” or not.

Let me know what you decide. This is a tough one to take seriously enough to pull the engine apart, but at the same time, it’ll be tough to overcome if the worst case scenario were to unfold.