Hi all, looking for help with weird scenario. Some back story first.
- '86 3.2 engine, PO rebuilt with <10k on rebuild. Looks like rebuild focused on heads, valves, guides done etc. Pretty sure bottom end was left alone. Oil pressure good, pegged at 100 on press gauge at 3k RPM car at 210* temp.
- Oil change ~ 600 miles ago (Brad Penn), no bits on magnetic oil plug save for very little grey sludge.
- In the past week or so I have been doing some runs with the PerfExpert smart phone app and hit rev limiter briefly in 2nd gear couple of times, oil always up to op temp. Yesterday after a run parked it, all seemed fine. 3 hours later started it to drive into garage and knocking noise. Engine was running with the noise for about 5 minutes while I listened in horror. It didn't seem like valve train, not linked to any particular side, more from middle of engine. Quite a hollow knock sound - rod bearing says I.
- So today I pulled the engine oil plug and strained it through some paper shop towel. The following pics show what I found in there. The oil plug was as seen in the pic below, no metal bits, maybe a very light misting of the grey sludge.
- So what could these black pieces be? They are not metal, carbon?. I was able to crush one piece with a spoon, just crumbled up.
- And more importantly as there are no metal pieces on the oil plug is it safe to assume no bearing failure? Or did I shut it down soon enough that the damage didn't get as far as the oil plug?
- What should I do next? Thank you in advance...
