So yesterday I rebuilt my vanos with Beisan seals and their anti-rattle kit, that part of the job went great. The part that didn't go great was when I pulled the vanos unit and found the inside of my exhaust cam was full of metal shavings at the front of the engine. Under the valve cover was extremely clean, not a spec of sludge or shavings anywhere in the head. I changed the oil on Saturday and did not notice any metal flakes or anything out of the ordinary and the filter was very clean. It makes no weird noises aside from the vanos rattle (which is now gone) and it runs perfectly. Both timing chains look to be in perfect shape and the sprockets at the top of the engine looked basically new. Looking down into the lower timing cover I did not see anything abnormal either, everything was nice and clean. I cleaned out the cam with a magnet pickup (shavings are magnetic, all in all pulled less than a teaspoon of shavings) as best I could and re-assembled everything. The shavings don't look very fresh as they came out somewhat black instead of shiny silver so they may have been there for a while. What is confusing me is where they came from, I was under the impression that the cams were hollow tubes with nothing happening inside, so its not like something in there would be disintegrating. And if something else were self destructing like a bearing, I would see a lot more flakes in the filter and oil than just in the center of the cam. Does anyone have any clue where these came from? Is this a normal place for things to collect? Everything else looked to be in extremely good shape so I am baffled by this.
I couldn't get a great picture of the shavings but I have one where you can see a couple pieces near the opening at the front of the cam, will post as soon as I get a chance.
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m42b32
So yesterday I rebuilt my vanos with Beisan seals and their anti-rattle kit, that part of the job went great. The part that didn't go great was when I pulled the vanos unit and found the inside of my exhaust cam was full of metal shavings at the front of the engine. Under the valve cover was extremely clean, not a spec of sludge or shavings anywhere in the head. I changed the oil on Saturday and did not notice any metal flakes or anything out of the ordinary and the filter was very clean. It makes no weird noises aside from the vanos rattle (which is now gone) and it runs perfectly. Both timing chains look to be in perfect shape and the sprockets at the top of the engine looked basically new. Looking down into the lower timing cover I did not see anything abnormal either, everything was nice and clean. I cleaned out the cam with a magnet pickup (shavings are magnetic, all in all pulled less than a teaspoon of shavings) as best I could and re-assembled everything. The shavings don't look very fresh as they came out somewhat black instead of shiny silver so they may have been there for a while. What is confusing me is where they came from, I was under the impression that the cams were hollow tubes with nothing happening inside, so its not like something in there would be disintegrating. And if something else were self destructing like a bearing, I would see a lot more flakes in the filter and oil than just in the center of the cam. Does anyone have any clue where these came from? Is this a normal place for things to collect? Everything else looked to be in extremely good shape so I am baffled by this.
I couldn't get a great picture of the shavings but I have one where you can see a couple pieces near the opening at the front of the cam, will post as soon as I get a chance.
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