Most likely damage to ALH without oil

[the caveman]

May be for sale. I changed all the bottom end bearings today, even though there was very little wear showing on the journals. Also checked and wet sanded cam bearings [caps]. Cam shows no discernable wear. New oil and filter, very tiny amount of shavings were in the pan.

[nathan_b]

we need more info.

you ran it out of oil... was there none on the dip stick? did the idiot light come on?

did you drive it 25 miles on the highway with the idiot light on?

did it lock up?

did it stop running?

why did you change bearings? were you having oil pressure problems?

we need more info, you get the idea.

[nathan_b]

as for the shavings, find out what metal they are and that will tell you where they came from.

whether they or madnetic or not will tell you a lot.

[the caveman]

car was being driven by my girlfriends cousin. Light came on, he couldn't pull off for about 5 kms,by then it was making noise.Seal blew out at the cooler.
Never locked up.
barely any metal in the pan. When i looked at the strainer, i realized the bits that were in there looked like a drain plug insert/repair because it was aluminum and circular and not bearing material or steel.
Really very little metal to be seen.
Bearings had some wear but the journals looked fine and all passed the finger and fingernail test ,and nothing to be seen. Couldn't look at # 5 main though.
Cam showed no wear, but i had to do a small clean up on the caps, seen much worse on cars that were "fine"

[Vincent Waldon]

barely any metal in the pan.

Yup... my guess is that all the drive really did was scrap a year or two off the engine's overall lifespan but not wound anything fatally... you've looked at the major wear areas and not seen anything significant.

The other big area would be galling on the piston bores... if you know someone with a borescope you could have a peek... or run a quick compression check.

Fill it and drive on I say!!

[the caveman]

Thought about finding a borescope to do exactly that. I saw one for sale for around $180.
I am going to pull the valve cover again to recheck if i can see any stuck lifters, but it sounds suspiciously like when i bought my 98 AHU for dirt years ago. Thought it was also a lifter or injector, but it turned out to be a bad piston.

[theman53]

I don't know about the "new" stuff, but my friend had one that came into the shop. It was wrecked and the guy wanted it totaled but the insurance didn't think so. IIRC it was a 1.8 8v gasser. My friend was friends with this guy and they arranged a deal where the owner would come in real quick drian the oil when the car was up on the lift, and my friend would take it for a spin. 15 minutes later after several miles of freeway and city driving and idling he pulled into the shop. It didn't even lock up. The owner was "forced" to keep it and drove it for another year before selling. Other than loosing a little compression *unknown as they didn't do before and after* it was fine. They just noticed it didn't have the zip it did before.

I would say you are fine just watch the rings/compression....well almost fine I forgot about this : 

[the caveman]

Touche.

I just came back from looking at it again. Compression: #1- 400,#2-380,#3-380, #4- 320. Lifters moving nicely up and down. No borescope to look down, but i suspect that one of the # 4 lifters seized temporarily and hit a piston, therefore the worse compression numbers on that cylinder. less noise when revved, but still a bit too much not the be a concern. I will drive it home through the city without getting on the expressway in a couple of weeks when the law says i don't need to have winter tires as my relative bought another car [ 2007 rabbit 2.5 gas. Boy is he already missing a diesel !] and no insurance on it. Tempted to pull the head, but don't have a shop at present to do that comfortably.
On the other hand it's basically for sale ,if anybodies interested. 302,000 kms, needs nothing [ well other than the obvious].
And as for the toughness of VW bottom ends, i will quickly recount a story from when i was at the dealer. Around 1990 , a customer had his 16 V sicrocco stolen but then recovered. By that time he wanted to buy a new car, but the insurance wouldn't give him anything for his high mileage car. He asked my service manager if we could "damage " it somehow. I drained the oil and then started and idled it. 20 minutes later, other than the lifters clacking, it still was running. The manager then gave me a quarter [before cellsphones-imagine!] and told me to drive around the block. Well i drove and drove, winding it to to redline over and over. Did that for an hour, it didn't even get hot. Finally gave up, filled it with oil and waited for the lifters to fill and gave it back . He gave it to his nephew who drove it for a few more years.

[Vincent Waldon]

Ah the memories of early VW get-togethers where at the end of the day we'd roll an old Beetle engine on an engine stand into the middle of the field, start it, drain the oil while it was running, and then take bets on how long it would keep going.

At idle it would generally go for hours... even at red-line it tended to go on much longer than our attention-spans.  ;-)

[R.O.R-2.0]

i heat seized a 1.6 n/a not too long back. i thought for sure i was gonna be towing it home after that and swapping in my 1.5TD the next day..

well, its been 2 oil changes now, and its running good again (ran pretty bad right after it happened, and was down on torque)

still fires up on the first crank, but it smokes blue for a second now, i think i may have burnt the tip off a glow plug. and the timing may need a box hair more advance.

[the caveman]

Well found out what happened today. The guy we sold the car to, pulled the head. #4 piston and cylinder [the one with the worse compression numbers] is scored. He feels that the cylinder can be cleaned up, but it needs a new [well, not new- used ] piston. I have one I'll sell him and he'll call with a report when done.

[burn_your_money]

Thanks for the follow up

[G60ING]

Thanks for the follow up

I agree