R these particles bearing wear? Did UOAs show it?

[saaber1]

A poster on vwvortex posted the following. I also found an old UOA post (posted below). I circled the lead readings in red. The 9000 mile and 18000 mile UOAS were using M1 0w40 while the later ones were various Motul 502 products. Are the particles in the photos bearing wear? Did the earlier UOAs show it?

From vwvortex:

Originally Posted By: corradokidg60;68949559
Changed my '06 BPY oil today, noticed large copper flakes in the oil filter and at the bottom of the pan when draining oil. I've already had my HPFP and cam replaced (at 34k miles) now I'm at 71k miles. I've been using Motul 8100 X-Cess 5w-40 for the majority of my oil changes, Motul 502 Specific for a couple. No CELs, power still there, no emissions issues, APR stage 1 for 40k.

Any idea what this could be?

 

[saaber1]

more info:
Originally Posted By: corradokidg60;68961783
The particles are definitely metallic, as they shimmered in the light and between my fingers, they did not roll but were flat particles. Copper or brass as they were golden in color (hard to tell from the iPhone pics.)...

 

[A_Harman]

If the flakes on the shop towel are what he swabbed out of the drain pan, I'd say he has a bearing problem somewhere. (Hopefully the pan was clean before he drained the oil into it.) The filter photo doesn't show much, but if there are particles, they will be caught in the bottom of the pleats. The element would need to be unrolled to allow closer inspection.

 

[Zaedock]

Iron from the turbo going bad?

The extra iron could be causing the bearing wear?

Just a guess.

 

[Mokanic]

Popping the valve cover off will the fastest way to see what's going on. If you see no obvious signs of catastrophic wear up top you know you need to pull the oil pan.

 

[Artem]

Only 30,000 miles?!

I think the OP should have been doing 3k OCI's

 

[Steve S]

Hopefully it is the turbo.Is the car still under warranty?

 

[river_rat]

Originally Posted By: Mokanic
Popping the valve cover off will the fastest way to see what's going on. If you see no obvious signs of catastrophic wear up top you know you need to pull the oil pan.

+1

And though the lead reading is high, probably the chunks are too big to get a normal UOA wear rate indication. Only the iron looks freakishly high. Does this engine have those bucket type solid lifters? Some of those seemed to grind up at 30K miles. I think they had a bad run of them or else people were running non-VW approved oil.

The "used filter analysis" here in the pictures only shows something is funky. Take a peek inside the engine.

 

[shpankey]

Why after his previous run of 9k miles wherein his iron and lead doubled and quadrupled respectively did he decide to push out the oci even more? I think on his last uoa it was clear he needed to back down the oci. His first and second uoa's look good at 3k and 5k miles and he made a huge jump to 9k miles and got a bad uoa, and this was even with a quart and a half of makeup oil. I would have backed it back down again, not go up. yikes. To me that's kind of the whole idea, push the oci out a bit more and sample again each time till you go too far and back it back down again.

 

[saaber1]

Originally Posted By: river_rat
...Only the iron looks freakishly high. Does this engine have those bucket type solid lifters? Some of those seemed to grind up at 30K miles. I think they had a bad run of them or else people were running non-VW approved oil.

He replaced the cam and follower somewhere in the 30k-40k mile range as I recall. The followers do not fail as a result of using non-vw oil. Most all the failed followers have used VW approved oil.

 

[Audi Junkie]

Sn in the UOA means rings, so there is more going on.

 

[river_rat]

Originally Posted By: saaber1
...Most all the failed followers have used VW approved oil.

I didn't know that. Anyway, I hope they fixed the problem by now.
Post pics if you get to open it up?

 

[saaber1]

Originally Posted By: river_rat
...Post pics if you get to open it up?

This is not my car. It was posted on VWvortex forum.

 

[river_rat]

OK

 

[JAG]

Since those particles are huge and obviously caught by the filter, spectral analysis of the oil is going to greatly under-estimate the likely copper wear that they were part of. There is a size distribution associated with all wear debris from each engine part and we can see can see huge particles. Normal wear doesn't produce particles that large. Some of their "sibling" particles could be small enough to pass through the filter and be detected by spectral analysis but it would have to considerably under-estimate the total amount of wear from whatever part(s) produced them.