I recently built a nice motor for my SC Bay, test ran it on the bench and did all the normal stuff I do to get a fresh motor off to a good life.Couple of runs around the suburbs, all good, oil pressure 100% one small leak which was on the to do list.
Decide to give it a good run on the N12 to get the rings to seat in nicely, coming up a rather steep slope at about 100km'h the oil light comes on.
I stop climb out check all the possibilities, all looks good, I'm convinced the sender has packed up, it's a new one,
I'm about 3km's from home, decide to chance it and drive it home with the oil light on, all seemed fine, engine was still idling nicely and sounded OK.As I'm coming up mu drive way I hear knocking, knew immediately it was not the sender failing, it had to be due to oil starvation.
Parked it, removed the oil sender, it's dry, no oil on it WTF
Sump is full, decided to leave it for when my head was clear, as I was major pissed off.Never had such an incident happen on a fresh motor ever, and not as if I have only built 1 or 2.
Gave it some thought, it's obvious that there is no oil flowing, first thought the pump failed somehow or there is a major blockage, removed the tin 7 was about to pull the pulley when I decide to look at the sump plate first to look how much damage there might be, or if any metal bits were now showing.
I was shocked at what I found, no metal...... but there was something missing off the oil strainer.
The centre bit of the strainer that goes off the oil pickup was missing ??????
I take a look into the sump and there is the missing parts still attacked in 1 piece to the oil pickup, now I was talking some fancy language that even had my dogs running for cover.The peening and or the rivet that holds the 2 pieces together failed and the spring that is in the strainer forced the centering section up and blocked off the pickup completely, I pulled it out and checked it on a loose pickup i have in my stash of parts, to check.
What i saw was disheartening as when I sucked on the opposite end of the pickup, i got a nice good seal, IE no oil would have been able to flow.
To add insult to injury this was not a China Strainer, I have learnt my lesson with china parts and stay away from them when it comes to engines.
This item was a Elring item, at least that is what the packaging said, i have another 2 identical items in stock and looked at both of them closely, no country of origin or manufacturer, tells me one thing, it has to be a china part, beware, tried to pull the other strainers apart
to see if i could get the same result as what happened in my engine, one came apart with little effort, the other was intact after trying for a while.
Lesson learnt, from now on I will re-drill these things and rivet them.
Just as matter of interest, got a load of new Bosch items the other day, (made in Germany so I thought
) I know that these have also been made in Portugal & Spain and not so good Brazil stuff is also around but now there is a few more you can add to the list, Poland and Turkey, is where they come from now, I know there is also china Bosch but they don't dare put country of origin on it.CHECK, CHECK & CHECK AGAIN, that is what it will be from now on, did I say CHECk ??????
again.
