Small metal shavings in oil filter

[krudmunk]

Originally Posted by sly1types

What did the oil in your filter housing look like? My rod bearings were shot at 70k…

I think some oils like liquiMolly have a low HT/Hs rating, so now I'm running redline 5w40

https://youtube.com/shorts/hng4z07OXxY?feature=share

OP should hear the rod knock right? And also the shavings look like aluminum only.

Pretty sure OP ran without lubrication when he had leaky injectors and that did some damage to the ring or pistons. But I could be completely wrong.

[Reu]

sly1types:

Nothing like the video linked.

I did not see any shavings in my oil.

[Reu]

krudmunk :

Is it possible at only 13k miles I could have leaky injectors ?

Never had any issues regarding idling.

I remember clearly when my F30 would finish its cold start it would literally start idling ruff like it was suffocating. Turned out to be excessive fuel in the combustion chamber. I used to rev a bit the car until it burnt all the fuel.

In the case of the M4 I never encountered this symptom of leaky injectors till now. I'm still believing that it is all because of the OTS tune that is not good.

When I have time I will pull out the spark plugs and injectors and test out the injectors for any leakage.

Still haven't had the time to see if the shavings are magnetic as currently I'm a bit busy.

Regarding hearing any rod knocks I have no visible sound of rod knocking. The car idles and sounds fine. Up till now the car always drove perfectly.

Will update as soon as possible.

[D_SheerDrivingPleasure]

OP notes that he drives only short trips. This can lead to fuel dilution because oil will not warm enough to evaporate accumulated fuel. Once you get fresh oil consider periodic Italian tune-ups to get that engine nice and hot.

[Reu]

I have a question.

Is it possible that the OTS maps are causing my injectors to leak or wear out quick ?

Its bizarre that an OTS map can cause this harm. Running BM3 on my F30 lead to having bad injectors and running the car very lean and having the oil smell like fuel.

The M4 has the same smell of fuel in its oil so i quickly said to myself its because of the tune after what happened to the F30.


Another question is this:
Can it be maybe because of aftermarket intakes that my OTS maps are not working as intended ? I'm saying this because before my F30 had problems with idling I had the stock air intake. After putting an MST intake, i think after maybe a few days or a week, the car started idling bad and suffocating in fuel. Had the error message that indicated to the MAF sensor found in the air intake pop up. I kept running like this until i had to replace my clutch(i think around 2montsh after idling problems started occurring). My mechanic made a mistake when I changing my clutch of forgetting to put the oring of the boost pipe from the intercooler to the throttle body. I ran like this for 3 weeks until i noticed that there was no oring in the boost pipe. In those 3 weeks i had the error code regarding running to lean or mixture to lean i forgot what it said and idling got progressively bad. in those 3 weeks i believe that i ruined my car as i was not sucking enough air in the combustion chamber and therefore had no good detonation i do not know. I'm no expert in this kind of stuff please forgive my inaccuracies.

Is it maybe that when putting an air intake that the OTS map was not happy and messed up the air to fuel ratio ? Again, I apologies if I'm mixing stuff up.

Wanted to ask this question so that if there is someone that understands a lot in this kind of stuff he/she can help me understand and educate me. This is because i added a VRSF intake to the M4 in the beginning of this year and cant help but think that maybe there is a small chance the intakes are what is causing such problems. Always had this speculation in my mind regarding aftermarket intakes that maybe lead to the OTS maps not working properly in my 2 bmws.

thanks !

[Reu]

D_SheerDrivingPleasure :

I always let the car run through its cold start cycle before taking it out from the garage(aprox. I leave it running for 4 to 5mins). After that i drive for 20mins to let the car warm up properly before i take it on a spirted drive. But yes many times i do only just drive the car normally without any pulls or driving like on a spirited drive. Just cruising basically.

thanks for this info though I'll keep that in mind for sure. Thanks mate.

[JamesGames]

Step 1) Stop analyzing your oil filter and oil with techniques such as your nose
Step 2) Send your used oil sample into someplace like blackstone labs and get an used oil analysis

The oil analysis will show you the fuel dilution and all the wear metals if there are any.

I change my own oil - there has never been a time where the oil coming out of the car does not smell like gasoline.. dont believe me? Go open the oil cap of any other car and smell it. Direct injection cars such as f8x will smell of gasoline and dilute the oil of gasoline more than port injected as well.

The oil analysis will damn well show you if you have metal wearing and what type of metal it is.

[dezzracer]

Originally Posted by JamesGames

Step 1) Stop analyzing your oil filter and oil with techniques such as your nose
Step 2) Send your used oil sample into someplace like blackstone labs and get an used oil analysis

The oil analysis will show you the fuel dilution and all the wear metals if there are any.

I change my own oil - there has never been a time where the oil coming out of the car does not smell like gasoline.. dont believe me? Go open the oil cap of any other car and smell it. Direct injection cars such as f8x will smell of gasoline and dilute the oil of gasoline more than port injected as well.

The oil analysis will damn well show you if you have metal wearing and what type of metal it is.

Before you freak out. ^THIS^

[AlmondJayRoM3]

Originally Posted by Reu

M3orbust:

I'm so frustrated as i watched and did plenty of research regarding BM3's reliability. I never heard bad stuff from their OTS tunes especially in the F80X platform so that is why I opted in using their tune. I cant believe what is happening to me honestly. First my F30 and it only had stage 1 and now my M4 which is also stage 1. Again, both seem to not burning the right fuel mixture and I can't figure out why. I never heard of an OTS map from BM3 doing this kind of stuff I'm so confused and angry. Maybe I'm that 1 in a million guy that got unlucky who knows.

What i'm thinking of doing is to tune the M4 with the Stage 1 91oct map, which is 95ron, but still put 93oct(98ron). It wont do any harm as I remember one of the BM3 tech supports told me that going higher oct levels wont do any harm, only when going lower then what the car is tuned to have would create harm.

I never heard of people discussing that the OTS maps have high lambda values that would trick the ECU to inject extra amount of fuel in their cars. For some reason it is happening to me the second time so of course i would be worried that this is all because of the tune.

Will send a sample abroad for analysis thanks mate !

BM3 doesn't do any tricks with lambda to adjust fuel trims. It doesn't work that way. Lambda works the same as normal as a closed loop system. BM3 changes the base load/boost/timing targets to achieve a desired power output and will use lamba as part of the closed loop to adjust targets accordingly.

While the OTS tunes are generally safe, they will run your engine harder and will expose any weaknesses just like any other tune. Whether that weakness be injectors that are close to failure, oil that is near the end of life, bad fuel, or bad spark plugs, etc... That is why they are trying to get you to do data logs to see what is going on. The BM3 guys are really helpful and stand behind their product.

At a minimum, if you are running tuned, or running the car hard, get a good LL01 5w-40 oil and change every 5k miles. Then get it analyzed.

As for your fuel dilution issue, check your long term and short term fuel trims while driving. It can expose potential issues with leaky injectors or even something like an air leak with your aftermarket intake. Also try to drive longer to ensure that fuel that's in your oil has a chance to get "burned" away. 30-45 minute drives at least once a week is ideal.

In the end if you really think its the tune, then run without it for a while and see if your problems go away. Like I said earlier, I doubt its a problem with the OTS tune but you do have some work ahead of you to figure out what the underlying issue is. Good luck.

[Reu]

JamesGames :

Thanks for the info.

As previously said I'm taking an oil sample to be analysed.

[Reu]

AlmondJayRoM3 :

Really appreciate the explanation regarding BM3 and now I have a clear picture.

I'll try everything i can to determine what is causing this issue. I have a busy week ahead as i will be abroad, after that i will dedicate time to try all options provided to narrow down the cause.

Will update this tread when i get back and done some tests.

[james4321]

Any news?
I’ve got exactly the same looking oil filter.

[Reu]

Sorry for my inactivity as i have been abroad.

So I changed the oil for an even thicker oil 10w-40. When changing the oil no metal shavings where present in the oil neither the oil filter.

Did some data logging and BM3 responded saying all is very good especially for a high humidity environment. Fuel trims are all good so we can confirm that no injectors are leaking.

All spark plugs where checked and all are good. They had no smell of fuel and they look very good for the mileage. I had a small camera laying around in my garage and put it down the the spark plug tunnel and couldn't see any visible damage but will let a mechanic do it properly.

Waiting to take the car for a compression test and waiting for a quote to send my oil sample to a foreign oil analysis company.

What i can confirm for sure is that 5w-30 is too thin for these cars especially in my country, so for anyone who lives in high humidity and very warm temperatures increase the thickness of the oil even if its only tuned for stage 1. I recently opened my N20 engine and could see that some of the pistons didn't have good lubrication, especially the bearings, proving more that the oil was too thin. So what I'm thinking is that the small shavings that I had in the M4 oil filter probably came from the pistons but thankfully there wasn't a lot of shavings. Still will let someone who has a better camera to check clearly inside and see what I missed.

Currently driving the car for 1,000 miles and will do another oil change and see from there.

[james4321]

Let us know.

[Reu]

Hi all,

Sorry for not replying.

A quick update. I started using 10w-40 and after 1k miles i did oil changes and didn't see any metal shavings what so ever. From my last post till today i did two more oil changes using 10w-40 and again no metal shavings.

Compression test on all 6 cylinders came out good as well.

Will only stick to 10w-40 oil from now onwards.

[Dabeamerking]

Switch to 5w-40 oil.

[imperfectluck]

Glad to hear your pistons are still intact minus the shavings on one of them. Despite finding a proper oil weight I would still do the oil analysis to have proper understanding of the conditions of the metals in the engine at that time so you're informed on how things are actually looking from the inside.