Not Good

[smoking89IDI]

Well I just changed the oil in the truck, had auto-rx in it and that has done great so far my problem lies with what was in the filter. I cut open my last filter (before auto rx and using a quart every 1100 miles) and it had some small pieces of brass, steel and aluminum in it, this time I had NO brass and lots more bits of steel and very little aluminium, these pieces are very small but you can count them individually with the naked eye, in fact a couple were actually large enough that you could grab them (still smaller than a grain of salt though), I just hope that this truck isn't about to blow up on me, that would suck!! I am rather confused though as to where this metal is coming from, the engine runs great and only burned 2 quarts of oil in 3,200 miles (1 1/4 low at this change, never added oil since the oil change but did add two bottles of auto rx for a total of .75 quarts extra) with no blue smoke at the exhaust, is it possibly just a thrust bearing going bad (or gone) which is why I had the brass and now I don't? Or was all the metal in the sludge liquified and sent to the filter and it is just old debris? Any help on this is much appreciated thanks guys!!! BTW alot more oil leaks out from my cracked plastic CDR tube to the intake housing for the turbo than it burns I think, makes the driver side spring nice and quiet .

 

[6 Nebraska IDIs]

Hmm, my opinion is that its just old pieces of crap thats been held up in your coaked up oil. But maybe it'd be worth having blackstone test the oil?

 

[mankypro]

My CDR puts a bit of oil in to the turbo housing. I have littel blowby so I'm not particularly worried about it. Hopefully I don't need to be. Have the you done any "wet work" done to the truck? Like valves or whatever? Has the engine had major work done to it that did not involve a complete rebuild?

Could this metal be stuff from a long time ago that recently got knocked loose with the product you've been adding?

 

[typ4]

The only real steel generating parts are the gears and the valve stems, watch for ticking noises and definately check the next filter.

 

[smoking89IDI]

Engine has never been opened, 221,900 miles on all original parts save for the injectors, I can have my work test the oil, I work at a Cat dealer and we have an oil lab. I will try to get the pics of the filter media up after turkey day. There are no ticking noises at all, just the exhaust chirpy noise its always had.

 

[towcat]

i just pulled out a 6.9 that committed suicide by the fuel pump eccentric sending shavings into the oiling system. if you are still running a mech pump, it wouldn't hurt to take a look at the eccentric for wear.

 

[smoking89IDI]

i just pulled out a 6.9 that committed suicide by the fuel pump eccentric sending shavings into the oiling system. if you are still running a mech pump, it wouldn't hurt to take a look at the eccentric for wear.

Never thought of that, the mech pump is also original, how do I check the eccentric, it should just look like a cam lobe correct? I do have a borescope I bought at work to look in the engine if need be, its one of the ones with a vid screen so no trying to look in an eyepiece. The good thing that I could see was that all the metal was on the side it was supposed to be on, I couldnt find any in the upstream part of the filter, plus I guess if I have the pump off might as well change it out as well too. As for an AutoRX update I am now in the first rinse phase and have one more clean and rinse phase to go. The only other thing I can think of now is that when the engine is cold you can hear a faint but deep in the ****** of the engine knock at the far rear passenger side of the engine but it goes away when warm, hope I havent cursed myself, I just hope it is the DMF but I doubt it.

 

[Diesel JD]

I'm not so sure that I would do oil analysis until you're done with all the Auto-Rx treatments and rinse phases, but that's just me. It might cause some unneeded worry on your part. I only worry about finding coolant in my oil, bearing materials, and silicon which of course means dirt is getting in most of the time. The rest of that stuff may be too dependent on how you run your engine and what oil is used.

 

[smoking89IDI]

Ok i'll hold off on the oil test, I did have a magnetic drain plug put in when it was changed as well so that should help a bit, what are the bearings on these made out of, are they steel backed then aluminium with a tin/lead babbit coating?

 

[NCheek]

I would say go ahead with the oil analysis, just let them know that you were running auto rx and they should be able to account for it.

 

[Diesel JD]

You could do that too, it would be interesting. I just hate to get them thinking I have a problem when that may not be the case, get myself worried etc, plus for Blackstone oil analysis is pretty costly, through CAT its not so bad.