Found metal in my oil

34k seems bit much for break-in fuzz; stranger things have happened.

If it were mine, I’d gut the oil filter to see what it may have trapped and get an oil analysis done.

Good luck, OP.

 

You're lucky. Most of times I find oil in my metal...
Anyway, keep running that CAFE/EPA water that they call it oil 0W-20 and your engine will eat itself out.
I use AMSoil Signature Series 100% synthetic 5W-30 and 0W-20 mixed 4/2 and have NO metal flakes in 2 oil changes. I have 7862 miles on it now.

 

So that's like 4.2W-24
Brilliant

 

Please post photographic documentation of the "fair amount of gritty metal on my rag and fingers" claim. Nothing inside ANY Toyota engine should be wearing severely enough to generate metal particles large enough to see or feel.

Meanwhile you need not spend $$$ on oil analysis or specialty synthetic oils. Instead, focus on photo documenting metal particles large enough to see and feel on your magnetic drain plug and in the pleats of your oil filter. After 34,000 miles no such particles should be present on the magnetic drain plug or in the pleats of the oil filter.

 

Dead serious. Building up the stock for 10000 mi.

 

I agree with taking and posting photographic evidence. I’d also like to point out that an oil analysis costs less than a tank of gas and at lower engine miles provides a baseline to compare to as your odometer increases.

 

Baseline to compare what? Wear? Why should wear be monitored via oil analysis as the odometer increases considering that any major brand of conventional or synthetic oil will protect a Toyota engine well enough to prevent any loss of cylinder compression for at least 400,000 miles.

 

Shavings ok... Chunks bad!

 

So you’re saying you wouldn’t want to establish trends in the performance of your engine early on based off a detailed chemical analysis of its’ lifeblood? Because that sounds like a good idea to me.

To each their own I guess.

 

There is no escaping it .Cheap inferior Chinese steel contaminated and cut with impurities has infiltrated the entire U.S. supply chain.

 

I’ve heard Chinese steel is better.

 

Some metal shavings is fine. Never hurt anything

 

Chinese steel, like most products manufactured in that country, is pure junk. When rotors were predominantly made with US steel, warped rotors was not nearly as common as it is today. I tried to find US made rotors to replace my Toyota Chinese steel ones and could not find them anywhere. Chinese tools are sub par as well.

I blame greedy, short sighted US corporations for the demise of our once quality centered manufacturing base . I also blame US consumers for accepting poor quality products in order to save a few dollars.

 

And I blame the misuse of our taxes, thus we need to save a few dollars cause we have less to work with.

 

A more effective way to maintain the power and fuel economy of the engine over time is with bi-annual exhaust emission testing (required in some states like California) instead of oil analysis . The concentrations of hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide and nitrogen oxides will tell the owners which of the engine's subsystems (fuel, ignition, cooling, emission and exhaust) are functioning optimally or sub-optimally and require cleaning (e.g throttle plate, MAF sensor, etc.) or replacement (e.g. oxygen sensor) to restore maximum power and fuel economy.

It's those external engine subsystems that are subject to wear, dirt buildup and deterioration over time, not the internally lubricated parts of the engine.

 

The engine is not still breaking in at 34K. It's wearing out. An engine (or gears in the drivetrain) really "breaks in" (tolerance matching, surface hardening, ring/wall seating) within the first minutes of being run and is essentially fully broken in after the first few hours (or a few hundred miles) of operating. The next few thousand miles you're trying to prevent the cylinder walls from glazing from insufficient pressure or galling cam, crank and rod bearings.

After the first oil change or two I'd think you should need a lab analysis to know if there's machining debris in there, which should be smaller than the filter size (something like >99% for 40 micron and around 95% for 20 micron for OEM Denso filters) by that point.

The only time I've ever actually been able to see significant glitter was when I looked at the oil and cut open the break-in filter on a brand new 22R-E I built. This was after the first 15 minutes of a completely new engine. The next oil change was at 500 miles and there wasn't anything like this in it. I can't find the Blackstone reports for that engine (probably gave them to the owner), though, to know for sure.

 

Some of you guys are way too smart for me...

 

NAFTA, dumb politicians

 

Isn't op the guy with the knocking sound?

 

I think you're onto something here. When i was in Utah on a cold start I had piston slap with Mobil 1 0W20. I think that weight is too thin for these engines. If you look at the history of the 2GRE 3.5 they're pretty noisy anyways. But I personally thimk a 30 weight is better suited. When you go buy 0W20 Mobil 1s formula is based off " Econony" including Toyotas manuals. Not prolonging longenivity of the motor.