Help I need some answers

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nhkid

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Feb 8, 2003
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Location
New Hampshire
I bought a 2001 Cavalier about a month ago from a small dealership. I brought it home and changed the oil. When I took the drain plug out I noticed some material on the magnetic plug. It was very fine and was gray when wiped onto a paper towel. When I finally got the oil filter off (took a while) there was some gasket material still on the engine that I had to scrape off with a razor blade. I guess that on there for quite some time. The oil itself didn't look that bad. I did a car fax on the car and it appears that it sat for about a year. I just changed the oil again today and send a sample to be analized at Blackstone. Again there was material on the drain plug. There was some brown shiney particals coming out of oil filter when I dumped it out. There was also the same particals on the end of the dip stick when I pulled it out to check the level. The oil itself looks clean.

The car had 79600 miles on it when I bought it. I ran the Supertec 5-30 oil and Fram filter for 1749 miles as I wanted to get a sample. The coolant level has been steady and there are no oil leaks. It didn't burn any oil either.

The engine runs fine, is not noisey and is getting 31 mpg. I changed the air filter when I did the first oil change.

So am I screwed????
 
I'm not sure what has you so worried. It sounds like some Restore or similar product was used in the engine and is gathering on the drain plug and dipstick. Keep changing the oil every 5000 miles and unless the UOA comes back weird you should be fine.
 
I would recommend you go to a website called filtermag.com, it is a filter magnet that wraps around your oil filter and catches any metal junk that your filter did not catch, from what I read from your post I think you should be fine. The filtermag is much more powerful than your magnetic drain plug, whenever I take my oil filter off it takes me a minute or two to get it off, sometimes I have to hit it with a rubber mallet to get it to slide down to get it off.
 
I would use the ST oil & filters and do a few 3000 mile OCI's or until you stop getting debris out of the oil filter. Check autozone every month they have that 5qts & a filter for $12.95 deal. Go 10-15000 miles like that and you should be ready for synthetic....LOL
 
Todays oil change was with Penzoil 5-30 high mileage and a Purolater filter. Depending on the analysis I may use synthetic. I bought this car to offset my gas bill. I was paying $400.00+ a month for my 2007 Nissan Titan. Now that I am getting 31 mpg it cuts my gas bill in half. I love my truck but I would rather wear out this car and save my truck. I run Mobil 1 5-30/Nissan oil filter in the truck.

None of my other vehicles have had the magnetic drain plugs so seeing something stuck to it kind of freaked my out.
 
I've never seen a magnetic drain plug that didn't have what you describe stuck to it. Sounds normal to me, I wouldn't do anything special.
 
Originally Posted By: nhkid
Todays oil change was with Penzoil 5-30 high mileage and a Purolater filter. Depending on the analysis I may use synthetic. I bought this car to offset my gas bill. I was paying $400.00+ a month for my 2007 Nissan Titan. Now that I am getting 31 mpg it cuts my gas bill in half. I love my truck but I would rather wear out this car and save my truck. I run Mobil 1 5-30/Nissan oil filter in the truck.

None of my other vehicles have had the magnetic drain plugs so seeing something stuck to it kind of freaked my out.


Pretty normal to see some stuff on a magnetic drain plug. I put them in everything I own. You should see the chunks from a new engine. The drain plug actually will have little tiny metal shards on it. Looks "hairey" if you know what I mean. The thing about a "stuck" oil filter isn't that unusual for a car that's set a while. Especially if some gorilla did the oil filter installation in the first place.

Nothing to worry about. As with all used cars do a couple short term oil changes just to make sure and then go to regular intervals.
 
Sounds to me like normal debris. If it bothers you change the oil out a few times with a short oci. But I bet you keep getting varying amounts of stuff on the drain plug.

Good idea on the save gas deal. At $200 a month savings it don't take many months for the car to pay for itself.
 
nhkid,

I'm with glennc, the magnet is there to catch that stuff, and it's not uncommon to see some fine iron on the magnet, especially during a New England winter. I wouldn't worry just yet. I would continue with the reg. oil changes and wouldn't be surprised to see the iron on the magnet trend down, since the car sat for a year. Are you going to post your UOA results?

Good luck,

REDDOG
 
Quote:
The coolant level has been steady and there are no oil leaks. It didn't burn any oil either.

The engine runs fine, is not noisey and is getting 31 mpg. I changed the air filter when I did the first oil change.

So am I screwed????


Based on those symptoms alone, I'd be scared sheetless. I could not sleep knowing all those things.
shocked2.gif


grin2.gif



Do an Auto-Rx treatment to ease your paranoia.
 
We've had 3 Tahoes 5.7 and 5.3 variants. All had the magnetic drain plug, and all have a fine grey powder on the plug every time when changing. I've always ued a synthetic an top quality filters as well.
 
Did you get the report from blackstone? If so, just open the report in Adobe Acrobat Reader, then make it so that it's small enough to fit on a single page without scrolling (for me, 70% is ideal) then go up to "Tools" then "Select & Zoom" then click "Snapshot Tool" then select the entire document and it'll automatically put the screenshot of your UOA into your clipboard. Then, open Microsoft Paint and press Ctrl+V or Edit>Paste. Then, file>save as>UOA1 (or whatever else you want to name it) and select JPG (not BMP). Then go to a free image hosting site such as imageshack.us and upload it there. They will then give you the URL of the direct link to the image. Then, go to the UOA forum and post it within the guidelines. If you have any other questions don't hesitate to send me a message and i'll do my best to help you out.
 
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