Hot Rods oil pan bits

A few more images of the pump, distributor, shaft and the pieces. The pieces are slightly magnetized on the edge of a knife blade. The shaft fits in nice and snug in the oil pump, I compared it to the original Ford pump, same goes for the distributor.

 

There are 6 of them, do they fit in here?

 

No. It's one piece heat treated chromoly shaft. I don't think a hacksaw would touch this thing.

There could be more than six but the residual oil in the pan tends to stick them pretty good to the bottom. I removed the oil pan on an engine stand upside down.

 

It's hard to see, do they have a crystalline fracture surface on any of the sides?


(From https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatigue_(material) )

Or do they all look forged/cast on all sides?

Phil

 

They look like a broken off hold down tab from something, but I have no idea what it would be

 

Are they hard? Look to me like a stamping and involved in some type of pawl action if they are hard.

 

I thought nut locking washer tabs as well. From an old timing chain, etc.? Usually they are more beat up after several reuses.
D

 

Is that rust on some of them? That's why I always take off the pan before flipping the engine on the stand.

 

The pawls below are from a bicycle. I was kidding earlier about the 460 having a pull start but I can't shake the feeling those are from some sort of ratcheting device. Any chance those are pawls from a socket set ratchet? Did you have a torque wrench explode when the heads went on?

 

So THATS why my cranks just freewheel!

 

I'm starting to think along the same lines. Something dropped in or fell apart while setting valve lash?

 

something from the breather system?

 

Motor ***embled complete 7 years ago. Heads pulled off a year ago for some work.

Oil pump and shaft can't be like new, they have been run for 7 years.
What kind of work did the heads get a year ago?

 

Check to see if the tops of the valve guides are still intact.

 

Car gets driven around 300-400 miles a year and a few trips out to the local track, so around 3000 miles in 7 years. Heads were pulled off for exhaust port work and to shim the valve springs just to get by for one more year.

The valve guides are br***, the pieces I found in the pan are steel. The other larger piece in the photo is aluminum and I'm pretty sure that came off from the inside of the timing cover. All the valve guides and related parts are intact as I have the heads apart.

I checked the breathers, inside the rockers covers and they all look fine. I even cut the oil filter apart and it was clean as a whistle, oil only had around 75 miles on it.

I'm thinking something was dropped in either when I had the heads off or 7 years ago when the engine was ***embled. They stayed in the pan or got washed down through the oil drain back holes. I'll keep looking but don't expect to find anything.

Thanks for all the replies.

 

Mystery Metal like that could keep me up at night.

 

Yep, if I couldn't resolve it somehow I'd be wonderin' every time I drove it.

 

Hmmm......I wonder if it could be parts of an oil ring? Not sure how the broken pieces would get p***ed the s****per though.

 

That's a good possibility. May explain the piece of alumnum. Aee if you can find a photo of the type of piston you used and look at the oil ring groove. Some just have round holes, others have slots.

 

This is exactly the same piston I'm using. I really didnt want to pull the engine down that far but I may have to now. The bores on the engine are really nice as in no gouges, s****es, marring so if this the problem I got off lucky.