Posted by David Sherman on Wednesday, March 12, 2003 at 0:39AM :
In Reply to: Hey Willy-N... posted by Jonas on Tuesday, March 11, 2003 at 7:26PM :
I don't mean to stick my nose in you guys' business, but I've seen major metal shavings in a low-mileage engine. I bought a 1958 army genset a few years back that had a little flathead herc mill in it. It had something like 60 hours on the meter, so although it was rusty on the outside I figured it would more or less forever (at 1800 rpm) when I got it cleaned up. I was eager to see it run so I changed the oil, put water in it, and fired it right up. Ran great for a few minutes and then started knocking. I foolishly let it keep knocking while I tried to figure out where the knock was coming from. Finally shut it down and pulled the pan and it looked like nice clean 1/4" wide lathe turnings of bearing material in there. #1 rod had chewed right through the bearing and dug about .030 into the crank by the time I stopped it. All the other rod bearings were pristine and the cylinders had absolutely no ridges or even fine scratches on them. All I can figure is a piece of gunk plugged the oil passage to that rod bearing. Since the crank was shot and I was able to buy a new one, I never did try to find the clog. So, it is possible that although it is a low-mileage engine, some piece of that sludge clogged an oil passage and one of the bearings is chewed up. It might even be that the previous owner didn't do a good job of rebuilding it and left some crud in it and then quit driving it when it developed a rod knock. Could have all happened 30 years ago.
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