James187

Just got my oil analysis back. 12 months ~3000 miles for change. Some track driving car is standard 1999 S2000. 100k Miles. Indicates bearing wear. Anyone else had anything similar?

Lead- Usually derived from lead/tin bearings (white metal) or copper/lead main and big end bearings. Is also used as an octane boosting additive in petrol. If the lead originates from bearing wear, then over 50 ppm indicates a problem. Petrol engines running on leaded fuel can show levels of several thousand ppm.

Material................. ppm........Limit
Iron......................35.............100
Chromium..............2............. 30
Aluminium ...........15............. 20
Molybdenum........ 22 .............50
Copper ................15............. 50
Lead ..................139 ............50
Tin....................... 1.............. 25
Nickel.................. 1
Silicon ................37.............. 20
Sodium ...............3 ..............100
Boron ................96 ...............50
Vanadium........... 1
Calcium............. 2986
Phosphorus....... 1075
Zinc.................. 1144
Magnesium ........13
Barium ...............0

zeroptzero

If your engine hasn't failed yet, it may likely do so sometime down the road. That is a gigantic amount of lead, if it was related to fuel additives or racing fuel I would say you might be fine, but copper is very high, as is iron, and aluminum to some extent. You have suffered bearing wear and some wear of the cylinders and related components. The engine could be running fine but I would expect it to get worse at some point in the future, how long is anyone's guess. Do you know of any event that caused oil starvation on this motor, low oil levels ?

James187

Not that I am aware of. I have had the car for the last 5000 miles or so. I fitted a sump baffle and have done about an hour on track with it total.

zeroptzero

What kind of sump baffle did you use, hopefully not one with moving flap gates as they can be problematic. Either way you have suffered some bearing wear and potential damage, it could be main bearings or rod bearings. You might be fine but it can rear its ugly head later down the road. Run a new oil change interval and continue to sample and see if the bearing wear numbers trend downwards, assuming you don't have rod knock type of noise.

ThreeD

I have heard of others replacing bearings pre-emptively. I would consider this a push to do so.

James187

Is it predominately the big end bearings? I may consider measuring these as it could be done with the engine in the car.

zeroptzero

They say rod bearings are supposed to fail first ahead of main bearings, but I lost a motor with failed main bearings ahead of at the same time as rod bearings so it can happen the other way.

You can try to do an oil pressure test and see what your oil pressures are, removing the oil pan may help to see if you have any metal in the pan too. Pre-emptive rod bearing swaps and rod bearing checks can be a possible benefit as long as the mains are still good.

I had a bad UOA showing high bearing wear , then on a short drive after that point the motor self-destructed , the oil pan was baffled and oil levels were perfect but the previous damage came back to haunt me.

jyeung528

keep us posted!

Chuck S

Post the test results so we can all see it and compare our own data to include engine oil, etc. Just block out your personal information if you want.

-- Chuck

ThreeD

^I have heard of both going bad. No personal experience.

Rod bearings can be changed without engine out.
Is it possible to check the mains without engine out?