Metal pieces found on oil 1.8t AMB

[Toolaa]

Been reading great post here for a while. This is my first post.

Ive had a few recent low oil pressure warnings and was preparing to drop my pan today to cleanup the pickup tube.

I added a magnetic plug at the last OC and today when I was draining the oil I Found this.




Any ideas?

The ring looks to be about .3mm thick with a grove on one side and flat on the other. Its about 12mm ID and 14mm OD.

Looks like a small washer or spacer.

Any help or insight you can give may help me save this great car.

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

[mikeybutch]

Is it hard metal or can you bend it?Unless someone who knows every part of the engine recognises it you would best inspecting theinterior as best you can when you drop the pan.Could be someone has dropped it in there and it may have sat harmlessly at the bottom since.Hope you haven't left it too late to sort the pipe and its all going to be OK

[adamss24]

looks like an old sump plug washer...

[pauldazzle]

looks like an old sump plug washer...

Exactly what I was thinking.

[Toolaa]

Thanks for the comments. I didn't think that the plug washers were usually steel. I thought the Audi part was aluminum. The ones I have now are copper. Since the pan is aluminum if you used a steel washer it would actually deform the seal seat on the pan. I could be wrong here just guessing.

The size is about 7/16" ID maybe smaller. It doesn't appear to be a crush washer as it is too thin. Less than 1/32 thickness. Although I could be missing a piece it seems too thin and small to be the plug washer.

I took the pan off today and when i pulled the charge hose to the IC pile about 5-8 oz oil came pouring out. Im wondering if it's a thrust washer from the turbo. It's small enough that if it did fail it could have broken apart and gotten washed down the turbo return line. I put the magnetic plug on about 850mi ago when I added Auto-RX to try and clean things up a bit. So I think that its happened since then. After I first started Auto-RX i was going uphill at about 3500rpm. I had some hesitation and noticed some blue/white smoke from the exhaust. I also hears a ticking sound for about 2-3 sec. I backed off the gas and things returned to normal. This happened again a day or two later. Other than the occasional low pressure warning I haven't experienced any unusual turbo problems.

Here are the photos of the pan and pickup tube from this morning.





I can clearly recognize parts of the dipstick and maybe the tube. There are a lot of hard reddish particles. Maybe plastic but not metal. There are also some non-magnetic aluminum or some other alloy particles. I dredged the pan with a magnet and couldn't find any other ferrous debris.

I've never disassembled or rebuilt a turbo but i looked up the parts list and checked out an exploded diagram and there are a few retaining rings and washers in the cartridge body. Whats strange us that i would expect if the ring was from the turbo I would be seeing some very obvious symptoms. I don't want to go chasing my tail here but if the Turbo is failing is there any quick and obvious way to tell?

Thanks in advance for your help. It is greatly appreciated and i will be sure to share what I learn as I troubleshoot and fix this problem.

[mikeybutch]

Is there any damage to the dipstick or the tube?I know the tube suffers over time and is easy to replace.It would be interesting to see the inside of the filter canister to see what that has picked up.Cant see how it could be a drainplug seal unless anyone was daft enough to wave one around when the filler cap was off.Its not difficult to imagine someone working on something else at the top of the engine and dropping something when the cap was off.At least it seems all the bits are there and nothing has attached itself to a moving part.It might be a matter of waiting if its running OK.I suppose its not impossible for it to have got left in there originally?

[Toolaa]

I think the dipstick has been replaced. I'm going to replace the tube soon.

The last OC i did cut open my filter and it was fairly clean.




On vortex a user suggested the plastic parts may be from the oil pump chain tensioner or cam chain guide.

So at this point still searching for the source of the ring.

[mikeybutch]

Is that right plastic parts in the engine?Maybe so if the tube is undamaged.If the filters OK then the debris not been circulating

[adamss24]

That's a remarkably clean 1.8T engine....

[Toolaa]

That's a remarkably clean 1.8T engine....

That filter only has 500mi on it. I was using Auto-RX engine treatment to clean things up a bit. So during the cleaning phase you change the filter only every 500mi. I was still very surprised that the filter was so clean. I had expected to find the thing totally sludged up. After i dropped the pan it i found it was actually very clean and its not sludge that was clogging my pickup screen but other debris. It looks like they were just too big to make it too the filter.