smurray

ok so my car is not healthy from what i can tell. When I put it away before the snow started falling last fall, it had a couple problems. First it was idling funny, the idle would jump up as high as 1900rpm and not come down. At the same time it also started making a weird high pitch noise that seems to be coming from the rear passenger side of the engine. I cannot discern if the noise is a high pitch hiss, like a vacuum leak, or a high pitch grinding noise, in which case i dont know what it would be. The icing on the cake was my last oil change... I had my mechanic do it (it was freezing outside, the cars lowered, i have no place indoors to work on it...) and he told me that I had metal shavings on my magnet. At the time i couldnt discuss it with him or get a better description of what he'd seen, I was in a huge rush.

so:
high idle
strange high pitched grinding or maby hissing noise
metal shavings in the oil pan...

The only other issue i have to work on with the car is that the pcv system (LS6 style, i know it shouldnt cause a problem, but it does) is spraying enough oil in the intake to throw an MAF code and really make my throttle response sluggish. I dont know if that could be linked to the bigger problems above.

Other than the problems themselves I had no reason to suspect something was going wrong. It was still pulling just as hard (harder, with the cold air) as the day I picked it up.

My question here is what should my plan of attack be here? Im hesitant to even start it knowing that there were shavings in the pan, I guess I'll have to see if my mechanic can describe what he saw better to me. Its had a few miles on it since the oil change, should i dump out fresh oil to look for more metal shavings?

Is there anything I can do to better describe the problems ive mentioned?

The engine is a LME built LS6 with about 10K miles on it. dyno'd 430/395. It was assembled by slowhawk. I havent noticed a loss of oil pressure.

Should I just plan on pulling the engine and going through it? I cannot afford a rebuild unless they are way cheaper than i percieve... I just want to be able to feel safe turning the key again... ive been losing sleep over this for weeks.



Thanks,

SMurray

DVS99TRANS

iTrader: (7)

What I had wrong sounds similar just without the high idle. Hopefully it could just a head gasket of something like that. I had a spun rod bearing though, hope that isn't your case. It took me off guard because I pinpointed when the noise was coming from and it sounded like it was coming from just under the intake (lifter) and no where near the bottom side of the motor. I kept normal oil pressure and started showing a decent amount of metal on the magnet. Kinda hard to help out without opening it though. If you have a good amount of oil coming out and making contact with the IAC sensor on the throttle body that could be a possible cause for the high idle.

smurray

correct me if im wrong, but a spun rod bearing is the kindve thing that goes wrong quickly and violently. Ive had the above symptoms for probably five or six hundred miles of driving, plenty of those miles have been spent running hard too, the car was spun to 6500 a couple times only miles before the last oil change i got that had the metal shavings.

?

DVS99TRANS

iTrader: (7)

Mine drove absolutely fine too, they big difference is I had 147,000 on the clock when it happenned. I never actually spun it and seized the motor though. Stopped it before it had a chance to do anything. As long as the rod bearing doesn't spin around then nothing cataclismic will happen other than metal showing up in the oil. My car saw 6200+ too with heads and MS3. It never developed into a knock or tap but kind of a squeeking noise which sounded to be coming from the top end.

smurray

the only way to be sure is to open it up, correct? An oil analysis should be able to reveal if there is any abnormal bearing wear, right?

I hope i dont have to start it to get a good sample... this change also has less than 50 miles on it.

DVS99TRANS

iTrader: (7)

That is what I did and I had a good amount of metal. Not saying 100% that it is a bearing but that much oil is a bad sign. Could be a cam bearing also but may not even be a bearing at all but yup only one way to find out fella. Good luck and hope it is something easy

ByeByeRiceBoy317

first i would take the intake off and look at the gasket. if the intake gasket went you would hear it taking in air through the back side of the intake. also creating a vacuum problem, causing it to hold a high idle. that would also create the brake pedal to seem kinda hard under hard breaking so thats usually an easy way to tell. i hope its an easy fix!