Reply to "Call for help 1 hour North of the SanFrancisco Bay Area (Santa Rosa)"

The pan is all cleaned and buttoned up.

I stuck the magnets on the outside of the pan, where they still have quite a bit of power to attract any magnetic particles.

The engine was running perfectly, quiet as a mouse actually for a solid lifter motor.

The valvetrain all checks out. It is all perfect.

I believe all the pieces found are from the previous rocker failure.

The design of the pan is such that debris can be captured in areas of the pan, and unless disturbed, can live down there without ever getting to the pickup.

There's a 1/4" lip at each of the 4 flaps that the offending piece had to jump to make it into the "kill box" and be sucked into the pump.

I believe Roger cleaned things up, the stuff went down and lived in one of the sections of the pan for who knows how long.

Only after I added the oil, did it either wash something down, or whooshed something over one of the flap lips into the pickup box.

There was no other real damage to the pump, and anything that made it through the pump went into the filter. The pump showed that very little "bad stuff" had gone through the pump, mainly just the one chunk that stopped it when I changed the oil.

The motor never even made a full revolution before the piece stopped the oil pump.

Given the situation, I've taken measures to make sure anything the size of the pins found in the pan either get caught by magnets, or cannot get through the screen. Even if more pieces get washed down, they shouldn't be able to cause this issue again.

I've cleaned the pan, I know the engine runs, no damage has happened on my watch except for the oil pump which I've replaced.

SO, the plan is to put the motor back together and run it.

Next year I'll have enough saved to go through the engine (and the gearbox while it's all out), and I think/hope things should be OK until then.

It's all I can do in this situation, short of parking the car for a year. If the motor blows holes through the sides then I'll build a new motor next year.