What's the French word for 'shoe'?

[3Phase]

Oh, that's right, it's 'sabot'. Sabot tage.

I honestly had no idea anyone was so angry with me
they would do something like this.

I pulled the oil pan to clean it up and brush out any cribblies
that fell into the crankshaft/connecting rod part of the engine
before buttoning it all up and found an unpleasant present
waiting for me.

What is this stuff? It doesn't stick to a magnet.


Ew!
That high-temp silicone is totally obvious but what's the stuff
that looks like pieces of leaves? It's all over the oil pump screen too!
Ew! Ew! Ew!


A little kerosene cleaned the oil out of the pan and left ... sand!


I did find the missing leg from an old starfish washer.
That's the only thing in the oil pan that stuck to the magnet.


There is no sand pile in the garage.
I always keep the engine covered whenever I'm working on it.
Someone deliberately dumped sand/dirt in the engine.
It had to have been done when I was working on it at home or
when I was out on the road and it was poured through the oil filler.

Got to go....

.

[Gmac]

That's what happens

when silicon is subjected to high heat. I've seen that happen plenty of times in a lot of different environments but the one common denominator is heat.


I'd bet even money you sealed your valve cover with it and the squeezing got displaced onto the top of the head where the silicon broke down. It's also possible that other gaskets that you used it on had the excess silicon fall off into the pan where they could possibly have been carried back to the top of the head by the cam chain where they cooked and washed back down into the pan.

Bottom line is that what you are seeing is the end product of heat degraded silicon sealant and yes, after all, just what is it made of.

[3Phase]

No, 'Mac, that is actual, genuine sand, dirt, and leaves but thanks for trying to cheer me up.

The orange bits are from the one and only time I used silicon and that's exactly why I don't use the stuff unless it's the only thing available. I had to use an old tube of high-temp orange to seal the shifter cover when the starfish washer broke and I didn't have any Yamabond 4.

Yes, Yamabond is silicone but Yama-anything sealer doesn't turn into sand.


Thinking back: the only time I've had the engine open when it wasn't in the garage was the campground at the 2014 Colorado Rally when I pulled the valve cover and checked the clearances but I didn't notice any sand, dirt, or leaves in the head before I put the valve cover back on.

.

[XJOK2PLAY]

So, Scott... this is Columbo's engine?
The same one that didn't make it back from last year's Colorado rally?

Holy crap, Dude!
No wonder it didn't make it!

Now... didn't you have it all apart, rebuilding it from parts of other donor engines you had, just before you left for Colorado?

And the only other time it was opened up was there in Colorado?

Good thing you didn't try to run it! Wouldn't have ran long, like that! Yikes!

[3Phase]

Yep, that's the one, Columbo. <sigh>

I don't feel so bad now about the rings and cylinders basically disintegrating, except for ignoring the little nagging feeling that told me to do the job right and pull the pan and clean it before the Rally. I should have listened to myself, I was trying to tell myself something and I didn't listen.

I didn't have the engine open all that long before the Rally but even though the engine was covered and the important parts were wrapped in clean towels and shelved my little brother is trying to blame the wind and the cats. The wind may have done some of the leaf bits, maybe, but it couldn't have been the cats because there's not even one kitty hair. That's actually more than a little suspicious because the cats usually get into everything. I know! Maybe the cats tried to cover for the dogs so they wouldn't all get in trouble!

There was a lot more, a whole pile of the stuff in the drain oil and some fine silt in the oil filter cup. The grains look the same as what's under the bush next to the garage door here so I really don't believe this happened out on the road even though sand pretty much looks like sand wherever you go.

The transmission gears don't look like they've been sanded but they're pretty tough and the camshafts and aluminum journals in the 'bad' '80G head didn't look like they were destroyed either. I still have a pristine oil pump from that wrecked XJ I bought so I'm going to replace the pump and pretend for now that the oil filter protected the bearings and gears.

.

[mack]

Hummmmmmm

You don't have an angry X-wife next door do you? I doubt the volume your looking at there Scott is due to silicone breakdown. That does look suspicious to me, but look at your clutch steels and friction disc's. If they look sand blasted then you know it was foreign matter introduced on that side.

[mack]

Scott

Since the oil is drained and you have the pan off, what did the oil filter bowl have in it? If it was my motor I'd also pull the plug for the gallery that feeds the crank and see if any silt was in there. Hopefully nothing made it passed your filter but the stuff in your pan is pretty course. There had to be some finer material initially. I'd just use a gun cleaning kit and run a couple 4x1 1/2"'s through it, if you don't have a scope and see if they come out gritty. Best of luck!

[ViperRon]

You guys blaming people, this is not always evil people doing this. How long and where has this bike been setting???? If I were you I would take off all hoses to the engine breather take off that cap and check for any signs of dirt dobber nest. You better do this before you start in on the wife kids neighbors.

All kinds of bugs work much faster than us and don't forget did you ever once use an oil filter that set on the shelf in the garage open for a day. Did the bike set outside for a day or 2. Also the sludge is silicone and some may be metal shavings as gears wear and chip. Now I have seen engines that ran on Quakerstate oil have exactly the same crap and worse and it just came from the oil. Some of it may be clutch cork fiber. But I will bet the grit sand and leaves came from a dirt dobber. A nest in the hose top or cap and the engine will suck it up and in.

It probably did come from outside under your bush

I parked my bike under the car port and set my helmet on it on Friday. when I went to ride on Tuesday the next week a wren flew out and fully opening my visor I found a large moss and stick nest with 3 eggs already in it. AS the helmet was already gone I just left it for them till they were gone in a couple of weeks.

[3Phase]

Mack,

I have a bore brush set and I'm pulling the plugs on the the main oil gallery tomorrow. I got in a wreck a couple of hours ago and I don't feel like fuffooling with it tonight.

I'm not pulling the clutch cover, if there's any silica it's staying in there and getting put back to work scrubbing all of that deadly moly off of the steels from all of the non-motorcycle oil I've used.

I cleaned and checked the original '80G head that has the blown spark plug. The cams and the aluminum journals look alright for the roughly 90 to 100K miles on them and so do the valve shim buckets and the shims. Looking further inside the head there's no grit in the camshaft oil galleries or the valve pockets.




Ron,

I appreciate the positive thinking! No, I'm not going off on the neighborhood kids or their parents but it was deliberate and it was a people. I don't know who dunnit so I can't say it was or was not evil but it was definitely deliberate.

I don't leave things open when I'm working on them except while I'm actually there and doing the work. Everything gets covered up and put to bed when I stop for the day. There's at least a quarter to a third of an ounce of sand/dirt in the oil and the pan and I don't know how much finely-ground stuff was in the oil filter cup because it got dumped in the used oil container along with a couple of gallons of used oil. There is just no way that amount of stuff just gently wafted into the engine all by itself when I had my back turned.

The bike is normally parked in the garage, not under the bushes, and it stays in the garage while I'm working on it. There are and there were no bugs, nests or plugged hoses. All of that was off the engine when I was working on it and it got cleaned before it was put back on for the Rally. It's all off the bike now and it's all still clean.

Ahh, dinner time!

.

[bikerphil]

That sucks Scott. An old biker once told me to always tighten the oil cap with a crescent wrench, less likely to happen that way. Yep, it was a Harley guy.

[ViperRon]

Well If you have checked it and it has not had an opportunity for a bug to get in then you have a problem that may be people. My son when he was 5 helped me by bending all my car's radiator fins over nice and flat. My former wife filled my new car with oil after her dad said it was a little low. Filled means it was to the top of that little dipstiky thing. My cousins little 3 year old packed the oil filler tube on his John deer tractor with sand from her sand box the day after he got it. good luck my friend I would be upset too but these engines are tuff and I will bet that if the head had no grit in it the engine had no grit.

[3Phase]

That sucks Scott. An old biker once told me to always tighten the oil cap with a crescent wrench, less likely to happen that way. Yep, it was a Harley guy.

And a wise man was that old biker, look at the location of a Harley oil bag and the lid. Try not to think about where the amazingly-hot oil goes if the lid comes loose.

Well If you have checked it and it has not had an opportunity for a bug to get in then you have a problem that may be people. My son when he was 5 helped me by bending all my car's radiator fins over nice and flat. My former wife filled my new car with oil after her dad said it was a little low. Filled means it was to the top of that little dipstiky thing. My cousins little 3 year old packed the oil filler tube on his John deer tractor with sand from her sand box the day after he got it. good luck my friend I would be upset too but these engines are tuff and I will bet that if the head had no grit in it the engine had no grit.

Yeah, there aren't any small children around but I know exactly what you're saying! I haven't really worried about the who or the why while I try to figure out the what and the, "When can I ride it again?" part of the problem. So far the answer is a definite maybe for sometime later this month.

There was some grit and powder in the head, of course, from the stuff getting thrown up there by the cam chain and out of the gallery onto the cams. You can see in the picture of the #1 and #2 Exhaust valve shims and the camshaft bearing journals that the shiny, hardened, shims aren't shiny now. The camshaft journals are still shiny but the lobes are pretty much the same as the shims, they're dulled but they're not scored. The cobbled-together 2H7 head I rehabilitated and its cams look much better.

What I am still worried about is if any and if so then how much grit got inside of the pressurized part of the oil system. A lot of grit obviously got tossed on the outside of every single part of the engine and transmission but it appears that the filter kept it out of the oil system itself after it had chewed its way through the oil pump like one of Stephen King's Langoliers.

The oil filter cup had about a sixteenth of an inch of grayish slime in it that I think was what was left of what used to be the cylinder walls and piston rings along with some chewed up sand and dirt. I'm cutting open the filter this morning just to satisfy my own curiosity after I brush and swab the main oil gallery and I'll see where I can go from there. It's not that difficult to pull the engine and split the case but "I don't want do it!" <stamps foot>

.

[madmax-im]

Man that completely blows Scott...looks like you've got alot on your plate with Columbo...hope you can clean it up and get him back on the road soon...

[3Phase]

Columbo's XSpecs

Well, I've decided that stamping my foot isn't going to cut the mustard.

I'd be forever wondering if. If the crank, if the rods, if the bearings, if the some other minor but important part were really still good to go after getting bathed in grinding compound for fifteen-hundred miles so it's time to man the heck up, pull the engine and split the case. If. If, if, if, if, IF!

<voices>
"Scott! eBay! You know you want to! One-paint-chip-at-a-time-eBay! ee-e-eBba-a-yy-y-y!"
</voices>

Nah!

.

[3Phase]

It's good to go!

All of the bearings and the crankshaft look good. The oil was black and gritty so it's a good thing I pulled the engine. Even with the gritty oil this is quite a difference from the last time I pulled the engine and found out that it was basically rolling junk.





I am so glad the crankshaft doesn't look like the original did! The Main bearings and journals weren't in any better shape than the Rod journals and it took a long, long, time to match a used crankshaft to the original block then hand-fit the bearings.


That was in my first XS11 engine and it was not a fun rebuild but now I'm not at all worried about pulling the engine and splitting the case. It's just not a big deal after the 'learning experience' the first time around.

.