Anyone ever see shavings on oil plug regularly?

[mvw2]

Just curious.

For the most part, I've never had shavings on my oil plugs...pretty much ever. I know that's a good thing, but I would figure through long term operation you might see at least a little bit once in a while or light coating or something. Every oil change, one after another, the plug is squeaky clean. Yay I know, but you almost think there should be at least something there.

 

[ChiTDI]

My magnet tip collects a nice fine almost graphite-like covering.
The others don't.

 

[oilyriser]

If you leave conventional oil in for 20,000 miles there should be a golden or brown coating.

 

[Bulli]

i changed my oil yesterday. Mobil 1 5w20 in an 07 civic with only 8k miles. oil was ran for only 3.5k miles and the whole tip was dark gray. Same as transmission plug in my moms cavalier. i think its mostly break in?

 

[harry j]

My magnetic drain plug gets what looks like "liquid metal", kinda like etch a sketch material. I'd much rather have it glued to the dran plug than running around the engine causing further damage. It is very fine metal, due no doubt, to the use of one of those superb EAO filters.

 

[oilyriser]

Terminator II blood. I saw that on the differential plug magnet. Interesting was that there was just as much after the 1st 1000 miles as built up over the next 120,000 miles.

 

[ThirdeYe]

On my mom's car I usually do the oil changes myself but one time she had to take it to the dealership for a leaking oil pan gasket and I changed the oil afterwards and there were quite a bit of metal shavings on the plug. The last oil change after switching the car over to synthetic and running it 5,000 miles, there were hardly any at all.

 

[oilyriser]

probably let the plug fall to the screen of a dirty drain pan, and didn't clean it before putting it back

 

[[RT] ProjUltraZ]

Originally Posted By: harry j
My magnetic drain plug gets what looks like "liquid metal", kinda like etch a sketch material.


yeah, i just bought a Filtermag for the oil filter and another flat rect magnet for the auto trans, pretty [censored] strong magnets wish i bought them years ago

i have a 6 sp, so i put it on the bottom of the oil pan near the magnetic drainplug. i'm set now, i'll remove the pan mag right before draining and hopefully drain out the etch a sketch paste

 

[Triple_Se7en]

Only time I found shavings on my 4.3's magnetic plug was when I switched from 5w30 to 5W-20.

 

[TurboLuver]

I had a 2000 Silverado 4x4 with a 4.3L and every time I changed the oil there was a lot of debris on the drain plug. That's the main reason I got rid of it.

 

[Gary Allan]

I had graphite like deposits on my 3.0 Caravan at every oil change. I don't think I really got it totally clean every time since it just seemed to manage to shape itself to the folds in the paper towel.

The only exception was with an Auto-Rx cleaning. I imagine (speculating) that the stuff bonded to the otherwise free metals ..as well as the plug itself. I can't say it well, but sorta a chelating action combined with a displacing property.