Michael,
???I found the same item sitting in the bottom of my oil pan. I have a BN1 and
think the way it was baked into the debris on the bottom of the pan, that it
had been there a long time. It is a timing chain tensioner (sp?). Mine had been
sitting there for years I'm sure, but it never affected my oil pressure. And
still doesn't. I never took the engine apart to replace it and I've put many a
mile on the car since I discovered it over a year ago now, so it seems my car
can do without it. Had me baffled though and it was through this email list
that I got point in the right direction.
???Good luck in finding what's causing the oil pressure drop.
Steven Kingsbury
BN1 #598?
On Sep 24, 2017, at 01:34 PM, Michael Oritt <michael.oritt at gmail.com> wrote:
There has been a slow, gradual decline in my engine's oil pressure for a while
now--60 to 65 psi on start-up from cold dropping at running temperatures to
30-35 psi at 3K rpm's and 10 psi or less at fast idle. Yesterday I took the car
for a long ride and after a while at 65-70 mph the oil pressure actually
dropped below 30 psi, so it's now officially below the "10 psi/1K rpm's"
threshold.?
The engine has about 60K on it since complete rebuild so this morning I decided
to bite the bullet and drop the sump with the hope that I will find nothing
worse than a worn oil pump and/or main or rod bearings, either of which I can
repair/replace in time for some fall driving.?
I first removed the spin-on oil filter and upon cutting it apart noticed a bit
of black plastic debris--irregularly shaped pieces, almost gravel-like perhaps
1/16" to 1/8" in dimension on one end of the cartridge. The filter medium
itself was fairly clean though I did notice a bit more shiny bearing-like
material than I would have liked to have seen.
While draining the pan I heard a clunk or two from some solids going through
the drain hole and landing in a catch pan and on examination I found a couple
of larger pieces of the same kind of stuff--definitely some black plastic
material, not particularly hard as it would give when bitten.?
The big surprise was what I found when I removed the pan--a lot more of the
same small stuff and four segments of a black plastic piece. In the attached
thumbnail you'll see that they form a semi-circle about 5" in diameter and
notice on the two pieces in the 9 o'clock position that there appears to have
been some gear-like teeth molded in. The small debris is inside the semi-circle.
I'm going to remove the oil pump tomorrow but wonder if anyone has an idea as
to what this stuff could be?
_______________________________________________
Archive: http://www.team.net/archive
Healeys at autox.team.net
http://autox.team.net/mailman/listinfo/healeys
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL:
<http://autox.team.net/pipermail/healeys/attachments/20170924/bcb99aa9/attachment-0001.html>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: 20170924_130509.jpg
Type: image/jpeg
Size: 3465792 bytes
Desc: not available
URL:
<http://autox.team.net/pipermail/healeys/attachments/20170924/bcb99aa9/attachment-0001.jpg>
|