Quote:
Originally Posted by Happy
I had to replace mine at 95,000. I’ve always kept my maintenance a priority! Top of the line fluids, the whole 9. Like dkl said, get to it before it spins, or causes crank damage. The more wear, the more money to repair.
My service shop said, one of the main causes is not warming the oil to a temp of 160 before operation, poor oil intervals, and extreme spirited driving.
I personally warm my truck up for at least 5 to 7 minutes, and I always change my oil at 3500 to 5000 miles. I do drive her with enthusiasm, and it’s a rarity, but nothing I feel would call for rod bearings.
Maybe some of us have some that are faulty?  |
I'll offer another, contrasting data point = my 2001 3.0i at 199k miles, running well, only engine work was the head gasket job 3 years ago.
I got it at 169k miles. PO had it from 46k-169k, had pro's do everything ... badly. Mostly at the dealers, but Jiffy Lube had done a synthetic oil change a couple of hundred miles earlier. I did an oil change anyway, not trusting anything. Very dark oil came out. Oil filter was crumpled / collapsed. I later found that this was because the bottom of a previous filter had come off and was stuck in the bottom of the filter housing. So the only way to get the filter in there was to jam it in and make it work.
^^^ Point of that is that the PO probably thought it was well taken care of (and he sure spent a lot of $$ on repairs), but if that is any indication, it was definitely not.
Since I got it, I've done synthetic 5W-30 (whatever brand I have on the shelf - Castrol Edge, Mobil 1, Pennzoil, whatever) changes. Mann / Mahle filter. Never more than 5k miles interval, which is usually about a year. I even usually re-use the drain plug washer.
^^^ So I take care of it, but nobody will be calling me an enthusiast about it.
I have some leaks which keep the bottom of my engine rust free and low drag. I never add more than 1 qt between the 3-5k OCI changes, despite the leaks. So I might have near zero internal oil consumption.
Have never done a Blackstone analysis on this car.
Warm up protocol: immediately after starting the engine, turn off all the HVAC, radio, computer display nonsense that powers up. Seatbelt on, and drive away, usually within about 10 seconds.
It is neither babied nor raced. Driven pretty normally, tending towards slower rather than faster.
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And I basically have no engine problems that I know about. I do know the car has made it to 199k (no AT problems either) with no end in sight. When the head work was done, everything up top looked perfect, chains and sprockets too.
So my conclusion is that these engines are not especially fragile if they are used normally, which it sounds like @RussianBlue does. Bottom end engine problems do seem rare on this forum, for the M54s at least.
The only thing he does that does not match my protocol (other than getting the oil tested) is the slightly longer OCI he uses.
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Random thought to consider:
is the experimental procedure consistent between all those samples? Catching the oil midway through the drain? Is the drain plug washer Copper? Could that contaminate?
I think you noticed some cam wear when the head was off. Could that (lobes and bearings) be the source of some of this? Any other things that you uncovered up top that could lead to these readings?