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Gold flakes in the oil cant be good

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Joined
Nov 24, 2003
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After 130000 miles I think the bearings went south. I noticed that my engine developed a slight tick which I couldent seem to isolate, I go to school and only come home every so often and never really found the time to mess with it. Anyway since Iam going to be home over christmas I thought why not do timing chain and valve springs. After draining the oil i noticed a slight haze in the oil but the oil coming out of the filter is saturated with golden flakes. I guess my question is what are my options and what would be a ball park figure of how much this is going to cost to fully fix.
 
to fully fix = rebuild - about $2k + all the other goodies while it is all apart like 4,000 stall torque converter to help spool the 76 turbo :) :) :)

Something usually goes wrong with the crank to cause the bearings to die and that means turn crank and line bore. At 130K, the cylinders are probably not in the best shape and the pistons have probably been knocked enough to warrent replacement so bore, new pistons, rings, balance. clean up the heads...

Might get lucky with just some new bearings and as good a clean out as you can give the block. What does the oil pressure look like?
 
Inneedofabuick said:
After 130000 miles I think the bearings went south. I noticed that my engine developed a slight tick which I couldent seem to isolate, I go to school and only come home every so often and never really found the time to mess with it. Anyway since Iam going to be home over christmas I thought why not do timing chain and valve springs. After draining the oil i noticed a slight haze in the oil but the oil coming out of the filter is saturated with golden flakes. I guess my question is what are my options and what would be a ball park figure of how much this is going to cost to fully fix.
Sorry to hear that bro. I have a new set of .030 over hypereutectic pistons and speed pro rings if you need them. I will sell them to you cheaper than you could find them anywhere else new. I had a bad front main on one enging i had. No reason as to why the main went. Usually the front cam bearing is shot and bleeds off a lot of oil pressure(especially with high volume oil pumps) which is usually a main cause for low oil pressure in these engines. Also check the timing cover for wear. Blueprint the pump and you should have better luck. Sometimes these engines have low oil pressure even if everything is right on in the front cover. Differences in the lifter bores and what not will have a negative effect on oil pressure these engines are plagued with. You will be spending $1500-$2000 to get it back together right. You will need a bore and hone with a torque plate installed, deck milled true, line hone, new fasteners, rods resized, and new casting plugs installed. More if you go with forged pistons, forged rods, girdle etc.
 
hey Matt, i got to thinking and the material is probably the front cam bearing, the noise was just too close to the top of the motor around the cam sensor, but it has probably damaged other components as well. I didn't realize the car had 130,000 on it either, so as stated above the piston bores are probably pretty oblong and will need a boring with new pistons. On top of that new bearings, crank possibly turned and polished etc.... I don't see it being 2000 $ though as even my motor with forged TRWs, and ported heads wasn't quite that much. Let me know and we can have it pulled in 2-4 hours. JK machine shop has done great work for a lot of local buick guys and they will treat ya right for sure.
 
The factory cam bearings dont contain any gold or copper colored metals. Only lead colored metals. Its probably a main bearing going away.
 
Thats one of the worst bits of news you can probably hear, but yeah that is bad bearings. If the motor has to come out, there is no time like then to do it up right. Trying to save 100 bucks can cost you thousands later on. Find someone who has the right jig for square decking a block. Most race engine builders will have that. I would go with a square/zero deck so you can get the proper quench and reduce detonation. Detonation is extremely hard on rod and main bearings as we all know. Most important of all, line hone it. If it looks like it has been lined honed before, try and find yourself some virgin main caps, so that you dont keep creeping the position of the crank higher up, which will retard cam timing and put more slop in your timing chain than you want. You also will end up with a portion of the thrust bearing support in the block and cap not being round, because a line hone cannot cut the part of it where the thrust bearing flanges out and nests deeper in the block. If you go with a main girdle (highly recommend), make sure they have it so it can be bolted on when it gets line honed. I would also go with ARP main studs at the same time. If you decide to change any of these things down the road, the line hone will distort differently than it was before. So heres what i would do:
Buy some ARP main studs.
Buy a main girdle.
Get some virgin caps if the motor has been line honed before.
Double roller timing chain and eliminate the chain tensioner all together.
New oil pump, but I wouldnt go with a high volume pump because unless you've modified the block to allow rapid draining of oil to the pan, all your oil will end up in the top of the motor cause it cant drain quick enough.
JE pistons.
Good rods with ARP hardware. Does Eagle make rods for these engines?
If you have the money, go with a roller cam.
Eliminate that God awful rope seal on the rear main.
If you end up getting your heads done, go with a proven performer. I saw a set yesterday that a friend brought by, and I couldnt believe the hackery. The valve heights were all over the place cause the seats were unevenly cut. The intake valve in 1 combustion chamber was unshrouded 1/16" more than the others, and they were actually all over the place. Port volumes were totally uneven and the port job was terrible. The chamber volumes probably varied by 5cc's from chamber to chamber. The heads had been angle milled so nothing lined up on the intake. The intake they sold him had a bunch of glass beads embedded into some leftover sludge...that motor would have been gone in no time. The hackery went on and on. The person who ported these heads actually has somewhat of a reputation for doing TR heads. Dont know how that happened. I would go with champion. Nothing like CNC porting for consistency. Heads can be done anytime. But for the bottom end, I would never go with any less than what i mentioned above. Building the right platform from the get go is the only way to go.
Oh yeah...hopefully the engine builder will have a torque plate for the finish hone. Its amazing just how far out the cyliders swell in the areas where the head bolts screw in. My hone would literally bounce and jerk in the bore every time the stone would pass over each of these swells. If you saw just how big these swells were, you would wonder how in the world a set of rings can last at all...I even wonder how they do. Use new head bolts too, cause you dont want to take the risk of using a set of bolts where some of them in the batch may have yielded. Its things like that which can cause head gaskets to go. A yielded bolt will not hold its torque. Make sure that when a straight edge is layed across the tops of all the valves, that they are all at the same height. You dont want to have varying preloads on all the lifters.
 
bison you are correct, i don't know what i was thinking, it is most likely a main bearing. We will be pulling the motor out later this week so we will know the full diagnosis at that time. VadersV6... great info there
 
Most machine shops that do line bore/hones are very careful to not take to much out of the block when boring/honing during a line hone. They face of the main cap taking off a few thousandths then torque down the caps with the fasteners that will be used. They will hardly remove any metal from the block(maybe .001), most of it comes off the cap.Therefore the crank to cam center wont change to much. Build it around the boost levels you decide to run. If you go over 20 psi with good heads use a copper or steel head gasket. Make sure the deck surface is prepared with the right coarseness for the gasket you use. Cometics require a very smooth surface for proper sealing. And like vadersv6 said make sure the block is decked properly. Dont get the crank turned on both rod and mains unless it needs it. Only do the mains if you have too even if it costs the same to do both. If the rod journals are ok then just have them polished. No need to cut if they are good.
 
bison said:
They will hardly remove any metal from the block(maybe .001), most of it comes off the cap.
This is true for the most part. But there are some situations that force you to remove more than you want out of the block. The main issue is the grinding of the thrust cap and how it affects the seating of the flange on the thrust bearing.
 
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