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So I went to replace the oil pan gasket today because my 2000 Silverado with the 6.0 has been leaking. This is what I found and it has me a bit concerned. The engine has good oil pressure with average being around 40psi. Compression and leakdown tests were done 2 months ago when I was replacing spark plugs and they passed with 1 cylinder being a little low but nothing to be too concerned with. Leakdown technically passed but certainly in the yellow zone. I've seen silver stuff in oil before but not brown. I asked a friend and he thought maybe valve guides but I've never dealt with this. Any other opinions?
Did you just buy this truck? Doesn't appear like oil changes were done regularly. A bit of scoring on the rod journal. Copper glitter is usually bearing material.
However, if it ran good w/o noises, has good power and not burning oil, slap it back together and send it.
Or, do a complete teardown and rebuild. Not sure what your needs/goals are here...
Did you just buy this truck? Doesn't appear like oil changes were done regularly. A bit of scoring on the rod journal. Copper glitter is usually bearing material.
However, if it ran good w/o noises, has good power and not burning oil, slap it back together and send it.
Or, do a complete teardown and rebuild. Not sure what your needs/goals are here...
I thought bearing material initially but I pulled a couple rod bearings and they are lightly scored like the rod journals but still silver colored. It was late when I found this and haven't done a lot of investigation yet. I've owned this truck for 5 years and put maybe 10-20k miles on it in that time. The last oil change was done 8 months ago and has about 1500 miles on it. This truck is used almost exclusively to tow my Jeep so it doesn't see a lot of usage but it does see hard usage and failure out of town with a trailer would be very costly.
I thought bearing material initially but I pulled a couple rod bearings and they are lightly scored like the rod journals but still silver colored. It was late when I found this and haven't done a lot of investigation yet. I've owned this truck for 5 years and put maybe 10-20k miles on it in that time. The last oil change was done 8 months ago and has about 1500 miles on it. This truck is used almost exclusively to tow my Jeep so it doesn't see a lot of usage but it does see hard usage and failure out of town with a trailer would be very costly.
Oh, ok. That makes sense. So only reason you dropped the pan is due to oil leak. Yeah, in that case and because it sees limited use, I would certainly just reinstall the pan and run it.
Have you drained the transmission fluid? That may be something to consider if it hasn't been done yet.
Oh, ok. That makes sense. So only reason you dropped the pan is due to oil leak. Yeah, in that case and because it sees limited use, I would certainly just reinstall the pan and run it.
Have you drained the transmission fluid? That may be something to consider if it hasn't been done yet.
I drained and refilled the tranny fluid maybe two years ago. It didn't look bad but I figure no harm in getting fresher fluid in there. Then added a couple extra quarts about a year ago when it blew fluid out because the dipstick pulled out of the o-ring... probably because I was messing with something in there and accidentally pulled it out. The transmission is the 4L80E and it has a massive cooler. On a 100° day pulling a 10k trailer for 5 hours, the trans never got above 180.
I saved the old oil because it was almost new and I was going to reuse it. I'm obviously not reusing it now and will try to cut open the oil filter later. Since I saved the oil though, I'll send some off for an analysis when the test kits come in. For now, I think I'll clean everything up and slap it back together. If nothing else, I'll be able to get it off the lift and out of the shop but also because I can't do much with it for the next 2 weeks and would rather not leave everything open, even if it is inside.
I drained and refilled the tranny fluid maybe two years ago. It didn't look bad but I figure no harm in getting fresher fluid in there. Then added a couple extra quarts about a year ago when it blew fluid out because the dipstick pulled out of the o-ring... probably because I was messing with something in there and accidentally pulled it out. The transmission is the 4L80E and it has a massive cooler. On a 100° day pulling a 10k trailer for 5 hours, the trans never got above 180.
I saved the old oil because it was almost new and I was going to reuse it. I'm obviously not reusing it now and will try to cut open the oil filter later. Since I saved the oil though, I'll send some off for an analysis when the test kits come in. For now, I think I'll clean everything up and slap it back together. If nothing else, I'll be able to get it off the lift and out of the shop but also because I can't do much with it for the next 2 weeks and would rather not leave everything open, even if it is inside.
Any other opinions are certainly welcome though.
With that amount of metal in the pan, no way I'd run that. You caught it just in time before you had a failure. Those journals are indication that something is going wrong somewhere. Don't ignore it. I'd pull the engine, and do a quick refresh. You're going to need the crank turned. I'd change the main, rod and cam bearings and flush the block out real good. Leave the heads on, change the valve stem seals if it has alot of miles. I wouldn;t pull the pistons unless you just want to do it all. But no, I would not run it like that.
Valid concern. It's still going mostly back together just so it doesn't leak all over my shop for the next 2-3 weeks. Whether I run it or not is another debate.
Oil analysis will hopefully help me determine what is going on. Crazy enough, there wasn't much junk in the oil filter. There was some but based on the "wet sand" look at the bottom of the oil pan, I would've thought the oil filter would be loaded. That said, there is no way I'd pull the engine only to pull the crank and leave the top end in place. If I have to pull the engine, it's at least getting a hone and re-ring at bare minimum. So with that in mind, any additional damage I do at this point is probably pretty trivial in terms of cost and work.
I finally got the oil analysis back on this. I had about 1/3 of the miles on the engine compared to the average but had 10x the amount of copper and 6x the amount of lead. I took a scoop of the glittery sludge and sent that in as well and they said that contained a lot of copper.
I know the Blackstone person isn't saying anything conclusive but my take away is that the bearing should be completely trash based on these numbers and they clearly aren't so maybe all of this was from some previous incident. Since sending in the sample, I've used the truck on a 600 mile trip towing a small trailer and/or with the bed loaded down. The truck performed flawlessly and the oil pressure was 35psi at idle on a hot day after running on the interstate for 3 hours and 45psi when cold at idle.
When I had an engine in the past that did destroy the bearing due to an oil hose blow out, the copper and lead levels were at this level. That engine had about 10-20psi of oil pressure on an engine running at 160 degrees and it would start backing power off if it ran hard.
I may drop the oil pan in another 500-1000 miles and take a look. If there is more sediment, it may be engine rebuild time but if it's squeaky clean, I see no reason to look any deeper.
LQ4? I bet you anything your cam bearings are toast. There's a reason people say to never look at them, lol.
Yeah LQ4. I figured even if the cam bearings are toast, wouldn't that still give a high clearance gap on the cam? I would've thought that would still produce low oil pressure.
Not necessarily. The cam sees oil before the mains, so I think the oil pump can produce enough volume to overcome any clearance issues. It'll be lower, but not low enough to drop to zero at idle or show up in any obvious way. My LQ4 in my truck has 173K on it and pulls 40 PSI hot at idle, and I bet the cam bearings are toast. It's just that common. Every 6 liter I've torn down has had bad cam bearings. If maintenance sucked on that engine, it stands to reason you'll have remnants of bearing material everywhere internally, and it comes out whenever the oil is changed.
Seeing the oil first before mains and rods is maybe, what, only a second? I've seen far more worn cam bearings in LS engines than mains or rods. Reason being the crank and rods aren't seeing many hundreds of lbs. of constant pressure on the bearings due to multiple valvesprings pushing really hard on the bottom of the bearings. I'm certain this is caused by "dry" starting the engine for the first time each day, or maybe mutliple times every few hours, like in around town driving. In my own engines, after 30,000 miles the cam bearings at the bottom all show copper. I can easily move the cam up and down a few thousandths, but side to side its still good as new. YMMV.......
Assuming it is the cam bearings which I really can't check without tearing the engine down, at what point would you start getting concerned? If this happened 3 years ago, I'd probably rip the engine out, tear it down, rebuild it, and have it back in the truck in a couple weeks. Those days are behind me though so if there's a serious need to rebuild, I may go down the junkyard engine route and rebuild that on my own time.
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Copper colored glitter in oil 
