help with bits in M3 oil

[addictionMS]

I was changing the oil in my 1995 M3 while Mat was over checking his valves on his 3.0 911 motor (porsche content) and found this in my oil



These have machined or cast horizontal lines on them, and appear to be the surface off a larger part, that is to say the surface has sheared off, which is this part.

Any and all help desired.

thanks

Jim

[KobaltBlau]

you might try uploading the picture directly to pelican. The link you posted didn't work for me with firefox, then with IE I had to log in with my bimmerforums login (which many may not have), then the picture was fairly small. pelican allows decent sized attachments, just upload the original image and it will resize.

[addictionMS]

the weakness is the camera.

Jim

[KobaltBlau]

Oh, sorry Jim. wish I could be more helpful to diagnose the problem; I don't know what to even guess. Here is the photo just in case anyone has trouble viewing it:

[addictionMS]

so I have it figured out, learned a few things along the way.

Frist lesson, always clean the oil drip pan before an oil change, even if it s a routine oil change for a car your have no reason to beieve is at risk

Second lesson, I kind of knew this one, walk away for a while if something is not as expected to think about it.

So here is the answer, this is a false alarm, see lesson number one, the only onther thing that was drained into this oil drip pan was a 915 trani, so I scanned the parts of a trani to find anything that could look like this and found nothing...at first. The I remembered that the trani was the the one MichiganMat was rebuilding, and that there were this odd thing going on in it, the input shaft had some of the splines broken off where the initial gear that goes on the shaft seats on its stop. We thought it was funny that these were borken, but assumed that it was a failure from somewhere in its past, and it had been put back together that way. Not the case, something when wrong some time ago and broke these splines, but the left overs were in its oil, and dropped into my drip pan, and no one noticed.

So the I looked at the bits and compaired them to the input shaft I still have lying in my garage, and sure enough, they are the same size and shape.

So these bits are off a 915 trani now sitting in MichiganMat's garage.

Jim

[KobaltBlau]

nice detective work!