What is this crud in my engine? (Now with pics)
 

I took my car in to the local porsche shop to have a myriad of leaks on the engine and transmission fixed, new clutch, chain tensioner update, and SSI's put on. Turned into a rebuild of the transmission. Now, many many weeks later, the car's almost done. But during the final test drives the oil pressure went erratic and the engine started puking oil. They pulled out the thermostat and it was jammed with some fibers. They dropped the bottom of the crancase around the oil pump pick up and there was a big mass of ...something... all up around the oil screen.

The stuff was some fibrous material, almost looked like it was some kind of foam filter. It seemed almost form fitted around the screen, almost like it was meant to be there, or it had been there a long time. It pulled apart pretty easily, but what the heck could it be?

The shop thinks that it was perhaps a shop towel or something that had been there since the engine swap 5 years ago, or even earlier. It must have gotten dislodged while they were working on the engine, had it upside down for a while. When they originally replaced the various seals around the front of the engine, including the thermostat, there was no sign of the stuff.

For the moment, they opened up the lines to/from the oil tank and oil cooler and didn't find any more. Maybe it's all out? The engineer in me says that the whole engine needs to come apart in order to ensure that there isn't any more plugging anything up. But that's WAAAY beyond the budget I've got for this car. What would you do?

First , you should try to identify the material that was stuck around the oil screen.

That's seems to me a bit strange.

Just my opinion.


Cheers.

I hate to say it, but you can pay him now or possibly pay way more later.

Without disassembling the engine you have no idea where else you may have that stuff. You know it has been circulated since you found it in your t-stat. You have all kinds of small passages in your engine where this junk can hide.

If you do it now it will be cost to diassemble, clean/inspect and reassmeble. Most lilely most if not all of your parts will be ok. If you wait until the engine fails, you will pay for the above plus any repair to collateral damage.

As Clint was fond of saying: "You've got to ask yourself one question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya punk?"

HarryD, I agree that the safe thing would be to take it apart. Money, however, money is an object. The engine teardown and cleaning would require a significant hit to my savings, a difficult proposition to sell to my financially concerned wife. I didn't get an estimate on the teardown, but I'm betting around $10k. With the cost of the work already done, I think I'm awfully close to the value of the car itself. A 73 RS clone with an '81 3.0 motor, it's got cancer issues that mean another $10k minumum to fix. I just don't know how much more my wife will put up with.

My wife would be questioning my sanity as well. Actually, every time I do something to the car, she does. But that is "how it is".

Without knowing what issues there may be with your engine, a full rebuild may cost $10k but not a tear down. inspect, reassemble. Figure about 40 hours for the shop plus consumable parts (gaskets etc) at say $1,000. This does not include any machine work or replacement of "non consumable" parts.

I would chat with the Mechanic and then think about what Clint is telling us.

- see if there is any metal in the "fibers"

if not, then the issue will be clogging

pull the valve covers off and look around

same with sump screen

change the oil & filter; flush the cooler and drain the lines - hose them out
- and then refill with clean oil & run the car until it blows up then rebuild it

if it does not blow up after 1,000 miles repeat above then check at 3,000

A shop opened up your engine to the point of replacing the tensioners. Had it upside down for a while fixing other leaks, put it back together and now you found some fibrous material in your engine ... Does this shop feel any level of responsibility for this?

Why should they? Why are we always trying to blame somebody else?

I agree, to think a rag or somthing has been inside for however long and not show itself till after the engine was recently worked on is the making of a good fiction novel.

Maybe they will be willing to work out a significant discount for the disassmebly, cleanup and reassembly for the rag that mysterously appeared in your engine... things like this dont just appear...

Amazing Co incidence. It jut happens to be a problem right after they work on it, where there was none before.

I expect they should work on this with you.

That I think may be the right thing.

From the original post:

Unless the material around the oil pickup was relatively fresh then they may have a case for it being a "pre-existing" condition. I would think at a minium you pay for the consumable parts and they give you the labor.

Jason,

Harry and others offer sound advice and while I can appreciate the financial aspect of this more than you'll know, my recommendation is for total disassembly of the engine and a thorough cleaning of the oiling system as well. The case, crankshaft, cam housings, oil coolers, oil tank, thermostats, and lines must all be completely cleaned.

I've seen first-hand the result of doing less than the above and please trust me here,........its truly FAR more expensive.

I ve seen a 2.4S engine wipe on a piece of blue gasket maker that came off the oil screen
Bruce

since you don't have the $$ to do it right you don't have Steve's/Harry's option

just run it until it blows up
or
park it and don't run it at all (for how long?)
or
somehow convince the shop to provide many hours of labor to pull it all apart + cost to clean things. Your chance of _making_ them do that is close to nil.

only other option I see is to rebuild it yourself and eat the cleaning costs too.

I am sorry to tell you this, but I see no other ways out.

Good Luck

If it were my car, I'd garage it until the bank account allowed me to fix it. This would of course involve paying for a tow each way... but as others have said, pay a less now or pay a lot more later. I'd call my option pay less later, but live without till later.

Of course I don't have to worry about a wife complaining. My budget & salary are preventing me from getting the rebuild I really want, but don't really need.

Good luck.

"Rebuild it yourself" is a remarkably attractive option--at least way more attractive than any of the others. A huge education awaits you if you choose to do it. It's not that hard--trust me, I did it with the going-in skills of a bad carpenter--and you'd be amazed how much fun it is.

If you can't afford to pay somebody to do it, which is entirely understandable; and you can't afford to throw the car away, which is equally understandable...tearing into it yourself can turn out to be a good deal.

"Oh, god, I can't do that, it's too complex!" No it isn't, and yes you can.

1+ A nice silver lining to the looming storm clouds.

I wouldn't normally equate "fibrous" w/ foam. Do you think the 2 materials are the same? What is the condition of your firewall sound mat? Is it the foam type, and is it intact? Was the stuff all clumped together, or were there floaters of the material in the oil?

i can't believe a shop towel can exist inside an engine for 5 years.
period.
no sign of the stuff before they work on it, yet the engine dies on testing.
then they find it in the oil pump screen!
seems pretty obvious when and where the towel came from.
unfortunately, you'll never prove their culpability.