Something has disintegrated - any clue what?

Just pulled the pan off an engine I just pulled from a donar car and found this pile of stuff on a particle filter. Looks and feels like plastic bits of something and theres a bunch more in the pan itself. Just wondering if any of you folks have seen something like this before and possibly would know what it is so I know to replace it.

Maybe some part of the carb fell apart and got sucked inside? I really have no idea what could have survived a trip through the valves and then into the oil pan like that.

The engine is a 430 from a 69 electra.

Many thanks in advance

 

particles...

Those look like they might have come from some of those nylon teeth on a cam gear, but I could be wrong. If a cam gear did get shredded, it would have been an easy drop into the pan for the pieces as they came loose.

:Comp:

 

The cam gear has nylon teeth!?? I didn't know that and will certainly be replacing it with something a little more sturdy.

Not sure thats what the particles are though since the engine ran quite well before I yanked it out. Thats of course with me assuming that if the cam gears were shredded the engine wouldn't run very well if at all.

o No:

 

that is from a nylon cam gear going bad sometime before, a cheesy tech did not pull the oil pan to clean it out.hopefully it didnt starve for oil and hurt your bearings and crankshaft.

 

First guess: Cam gear
Second guess: Valve stem seals

 

definately looks like gear teeth

Wanna hear a quick story about nylon gear teeth ?? My friend has a 70's Piper Dakota. It runs a dual Magneto setup that was stupidly designed NOT to be totally redundant. Both Magneto nylon gears are driven off a common nylon gear/dist shaft. That gear stripped teeth and took out BOTH Magneto gears' teeth !!

He was 15 miles out, running fine when he reduced power to start his desent. As soon as he reduced power "It started running funny.....and a bit noisy". He checked his guages and everything seemd still good.....and made the very smart decision, since power wasn't down, to leave well enough alone.

Usually, if the engine starts to run funny you would try changing Magneto's or adjust your power settings.....he wisely didn't.

He kept power on (same setting) until he definately had the runway made, reduced power to idle to land and the engine abruptly coughed and stopped !! He Made a perfect landing and rolled off the active runway, where he cranked it trying to start it again, but it wouldn't.they Towed him to the repair center where they later found the bad Mag gears and broken teeth !!

Thing is, it was a recently installed recman. Mag. Upon dealing with the manufacturer it was found out they only change the gears on a reman if "they look worn" !!!

Jim Lore....if you're reading, have you heard of this failure before ??

 

Those are from the cam gear, I once had one of those small peices get through the oil pickup bypass and was caught in the oil pump relief valve. Once there it held the relief valve open and no oil pressure.
At least it was a quick fix to pull oil pump........:grin:

 

Thats got to be it! Thankfully it doesn't look like the oil galleys were plugged and everything ive seen so far has been nice and juicy with oil. Hopefully the bearings are in good shape as well but so far everything looks great aside from being absolutely filthy. The real tale will be told when I pull the oil pump and heads and im not expecting good news because the exhaust ports were seriously caked with sooty deposits.

Thanks so much everybody. I really appreciate it.

 

Damn! I bet your buddy raised some serious hell with them. Its surprising that such a vunerable and inexpensive yet critical part wouldn't simply be replaced or upgraded during a reman. Its not like he could just pull over and call AAA if it failed.

Thank God he made it back down though.

 

I've had Buick V-8s run just fine for years with the remains of the nylon gears in the oil pan. Very common Buick problem. I found one like that with only 40K miles! Luckily, it seems those pieces stay to big to plug anything totally. Put on another timing gear set and happy motoring!