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  #61  
Old 01-31-2011, 12:23 PM
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It varies from year to year but possibly at least ten members a year lose their engines or damage them from missing the oil pressure has left. There are some threads about adding a warning system you cannot miss.

You are perhaps one of the fortunate ones. It is hard or impossible to know how long you where without oil pressure. The cam bearings should be checked as well perhaps. Others with more experience than myself may quote on that. The cam and rocker interface as well I suppose.

Since you did not blow the coolant out the rings probably still have their temper. Depending on your location buying up a car with a good engine but other major issues cheap might be the way I would go. If fortunate selling off some parts of it as well may make the cost very low. I guess it depends somewhat on your time and space available to do an engine swap.

I kind of stress this as there is a possibility of more work and money going into what you have. Also there is a chance the engine you have in the car is a rebuilt as well. Measuring the cylinder bores or the presence of crosshatching in the cylinders may indicate it also has some value as well. The condition of the crankshaft at your indicated overall milage indicates it is a possibility I imagine.

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  #62  
Old 02-01-2011, 01:22 AM
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I opened my oil pump and sure enough found the pickup screen broken and a ball bearing in the gear teeth. Is there anything other than the old style vacuum pump that would dump bearings into the oil pan? I'm bummed -I've read that there are as many as 12 bearings in that old style pump, and I have only found 1 of them so far as well as 1 inner race. Hopefully, having changed the oil I don't know how many times since I've had it, most of them dropped out with the old oil. I sure should have opened the oil pan extension and felt around in there after I bought the car.

I'm wondering how far I need to trace in the system for these bearings -does anyone here know of a schematic of the lubrication system for this engine posted anywhere?

What is between the oil pump and the filter?

Thanks Barry -I know starting fresh with a lower mileage engine is tempting, but as I don't have the time or space to transfer engines, etc., I am more likely to start fresh with a different car if it comes to that.

Last edited by clambake; 02-01-2011 at 01:32 AM.
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  #63  
Old 02-01-2011, 11:00 AM
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Sorry to hear about the potential of another car. The vacuum pump bearings in my opinion could not make it through the oil pump so no need to look further in the system for them. They are either in the pan or gone. Bearing babbit driven back in the crank oil feed passages is what might concern me.

Since they are usually straight drilled passages they can be rodded out. If the main bearings are good and no evidence the cam bearings are damaged I might just rod out the crank passages and drop a new set of rod bearings in.

You have to take a calculated gamble in life once in a while. I really feel upon reflection any babbit could not have travelled as you had no oil presure before the babbit got hot and extruded itself.

So odds are fairly good you may get away with that approach. The oil pressure was lost instantly. Those cam bearings will have to be inspected as well but since there was no evidence the crank got really hot you might luck out.

I usually never leave much to chance as it is too risky. In your situation if there is any remaining risk it is so small that if your situation was mine I probably would proceed. There will be no babbit even in the oil filter in your case I believe. You just have to make sure there is no babbit left behind that can travel or obstruct oil passages when the oil presure is re established Essentially again that means rodding out the crank passages and just cleaning up the open lower area well.

The intact screen on the oil pump will catch anything of a serious nature if you miss it. You are stuck with the crank rodding job though as any babbit driven back into the crankshaft oil passages could obstruct rod or main bearing oil feeds.

Last edited by barry123400; 02-01-2011 at 11:14 AM.
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  #64  
Old 02-12-2011, 12:32 PM
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Unfortunately I've hit another snag. I decided to check the part numbers on the rod bearings and found them to be a mismatched set:

Miba part no. 6032910
Unknown company (a group of four blocks with a circle around them) part no. 6012511

I am assuming the last owner replaced the bottom halves with those from an oversize set? Unfortunately I cannot find any information about either of these bearings on the web or my local auto parts stores. I would like to find out what I can about them before I order another set -and I better go re-mike my journals just in case.
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  #65  
Old 04-20-2011, 12:22 PM
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Hooray -I finally got everything put back together after cleaning as much of the babbet as I could out of the crankcase. I put in new pump, chain, rod bearings, etc., etc. and after a LONG initial cranking (now I know why lubing the bearings upon installation is so important), the engine now runs great. Good oil pressure, no scary noises. Thanks for the help I got here!

Oh yeah -I did retrieve one 1/16" ball bearing out of the oil filter housing, pre-filter -including the one that had embedded itself in the oil pump gears. That makes two teeney tiny vacuum pump ball bearings in the oil pan that wore their way (over probably twenty thousand freeway miles) through the oil pick up screen, causing this whole problem.

After I got the engine started, I ran the engine about 15 minutes and shut it down, drained the oil and as I suspected, there were lots of little babbet flakes in it, that I was not able to find when I had the oil pan off. I opened up the "alcove" on the side of the oil pan and passed a strong magnet (from the bottom of an old Sonicare toothbrush -very powerful) all over the inside bottom of the main pan, and luckily retreived nothing. I felt around and found two small babbet pieces. I wiped around with a few paper towels, careful not to snag them on anything, and closed things up and put new oil and filter in.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how many times I should flush out the engine like this before I can go back to normal operation? Any other methods?
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  #66  
Old 04-20-2011, 02:26 PM
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Until nothing is found is my only suggestion.
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  #67  
Old 04-20-2011, 02:45 PM
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You could try filtering the recently installed oil through a very fine filter a few times instead of putting new in everytime you flush.

The magnet may have not have picked up any babbit by the way as I believe babbet is non magnetic. Some will show up in the oil filter probably with time. Anyways it sounds like you are going to get away with everything so far.

What overall your post does indicate is that if the bearings in the vacuum pump grenade they must all be accounted for before the car goes back into service. Or a really strong magnet placed somewhere close to the oil pickup to grab it if not all accounted for.

There was a member reciently that could not find one bearing. I forgot to mention that perhaps an alternative was possible rather than just ignoring it as that is too dangerous. He had searched high and low for the single missing bearing without results.
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  #68  
Old 04-20-2011, 04:07 PM
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Good idea -filtering the oil and putting it back in again would definitely be a good way to avoid paying $30 every time until it comes clean.

While it would make me feel much better to find the other ten bearings, I would not be surprised if I never found another. I have changed the oil many, many times -both by draining and by strong suction through the filler tube -since the bearings were introduced to the system and I would assume that some, if not most had fallen out or were sucked up during those changes OR even embedded in the many filters I have chucked over the years. Now if I knew that there was definitely one more bearing in there, I would obsessively try to find it too -because I know now that a bearing, hard as it is, will eventually wear through the oil pick up screen.

I was considering embedding one of those Sonicare magnets in the end of the oil pan plug -drill a hole in the end and put the magnet along with some JB weld in there.
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  #69  
Old 04-20-2011, 07:27 PM
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I'd not worry too much about the babbet. If it is small enough to go through the screen, it doesn't seem like it poses any danger to the pump, and will be filtered out before the oil goes into the engine's wear parts.

If it is too large to make it through the screen, it is softer than the screen so eventually it will wear down enough to pass, which it seems would make it harmless.

So if you feel that you got all of the significant pieces and all that is left is small metal flakes, I'd run it.

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