What causes this excessive wear?

[air-cooled or diesel]

Ever see how much oil is pushed around up top with the engine running?  Makes a heck of a mess of the engine compartment in a hurry.

thats funny. reminds me of when i wanted to see how much my dads type4 bus had oil at head, i  pouring out.

[air-cooled or diesel]

am surprised with how your lower end looked, and running with lack of oil pressure you didnt take a look at cam and caps, and prob lifters. 

[RunninWild]

Honestly didn't cross my mind. I'm new to engine work and don't know as much as I probably should. I'll pull some caps during the week and have a look

[air-cooled or diesel]

yea you dont just pull cam caps, refer to book, you got to be careful of which caps you pull. #2&#4 you dont just pull, you can easily bust a cap ruining your head. #1 for instance doesnt easily come up/off,

[RunninWild]

Yeah rod, main and im shaft bearings are new. The rod bearings were in good shape and didn't have much wear. The outter im shaft bearing had some wear but wasn't as bad as the crank bearings.

I'll pull #3 and #5. If they show excessive wear I'll just swap on my other head.

Thanks for the advice, I appreciate all the help.

At this point my oil pressure is acceptable. If it starts to drop over time it's pretty obviously due to the wear on the crank and I'll deal with it when the time comes. I'm not going to be driving it much over the winter anyways. Id be happy if it makes it through next summer, then do a rebuild of the bottom end.

[air-cooled or diesel]

-a--

[RunninWild]

I did the front im shaft bearing. The rear looked in good shape and I didn't have a tool to pull it so I just left it for now.

Thanks for the tips on the cams. I'm not expecting to see much wear in them but it's nice to know I have a fairly easy fix if they are trashed.

[RunninWild]

Got a chance to put 250km on it on tuesday with a bit of offroading thrown in. This engine is awesome on trails, I can idle up some pretty crazy inclines on ruff terrain and not even have to touch the throttle. The torque is amazing! Very happy with the performance for now.... Intercooler (mk4 jetta 1.8t) and a mechanical boost gauge (35psi auto meter) are on the way to help make street driving a bit more pleasurable.

 I changed the oil and filter before the trip to rule out a plugged or partially plugged oil filter. There was a small amount of bearing material (small particles like dust/glitter) in the old oil I'm attributing to not machining the crank.

I wasnt able to track down a new oil sensor, or a mechanical gauge for that matter. During my trip the pressure was all over the place. I'm really thinking the sensor is bad (new one in the mail). 90% of the trip the sensor was reading over range (130psi+), sometimes it would flash input error (happens when the wire is disconnected or sensor isnt responding), it would occasionally give me typical readings (10psi at idle, 20-50psi while cruising). Is it safe to assume that if I was indeed pushing over 130psi for the better part of 250km something would have failed in that time? I'm assuming the oil filter or a seal would have blown out?

Anyways new sensor will be here next week, I'll put that on the filter flange and I'll install an oem idle pressure switch in the head and hopefully I'll get some better readings.

[air-cooled or diesel]

so youve got a couple of problems evident there, from you prev posts;

[RunninWild]

I know my wiring isnt the best, I will hook the gauge up to a relay and run it directly off the battery which should cause the readings to be more accurate. I dont believe that is whats causing the oil pressure to go out of range though. When it was working properly load on the system caused the oil pressure to read lower then it would with no load. Either the pressure in my system is completely inconsistent and all over the place and in general way too high (130psi or more), or more likely the sensor is malfunctioning. I was just wondering if it would be possible to drive the car for 250kms with oil pressure over 130psi for the majority of it without having something fail? For that matter lets say the engine is running at a steady 3000rpm, is it possible for the pressure to be jumping between 30-130psi multiple times a second? I was under the impression if there was a clog or a partial clog the pressure would still be more stable and relative to engine speed, just reading higher then normal. I'll be able to rule out if its a sensor issue next week I was just curious in the mean time.

[air-cooled or diesel]

yea that aint gonna happen, hot getting a head oil pressure even to 20psi(w/hydro head), isnt gonna happen

[RunninWild]

I've been fairly lazy lately and finally got around to installing my new oil pressure sensor which I installed at the filter flange. Started up fairly easy at -2c so compression is good. I don't have insurance on the truck but this is my reading after driving around the block a few times

Pressure was jumping between 17-19psi at idle but was on 19psi most of the time. Revving to somewhere around redline and the pressure reads 80-90psi and puts out around 30-50psi while cruising. I'm not getting the crazy pressure spikes like I was with the old sensor. Does this sound like normal pressure readings for that temperature at the oil filter or am I still reading a bit high?

[ORCoaster]

I would say you were at normal operating ranges.  My pressure is in that zone when hot and does get high on the upper end of the upshifts.
Good not to have spikes so likely a bad sensor.

[RunninWild]

Awesome! After a year and half of working in this thing I can finally relax and just enjoy it haha.