jdlewis

Help!!! Has anyone ever heard of this???

I have a 2003 Saturn Vue 3.0. The car has about 72,000 miles on it and I perform regular maintenance with no serious problems. Prior to going on an extended road trip from California to Oklahoma for two weeks, I took my vehicle to a service center and had a preventative maintenance check, including an oil & oil filter change. The car ran fine with no warning lights and reservoir and oil stick showed full. On return home, I stopped vehicle to rest and upon starting up the engine it sounded like a diesel engine. The valves were knocking. I had it towed to an auto shop who performed the following:

"Oil pressure is @ 53 PSI. OEM dictates should be 50-80 PSI...We did not remove oil pan because there was sufficient oil pressure at test port at cylinder block. We removed oil filter from reservoir and noticed no oil at reservoir. We inserted bora scope camera into oil filter supply passage and found completely restricted. We were able to remove some of the restriction (burnt [black] plastic pieces). We removed as much as possible and reassembled oil reservoir/filter and test ran but results were still the same. No oiling to top of engine. Customer advised that oil passageway from oil pump to oil reservoir is still restricted. Also from oil reservoir passage to upper ingine is also restricted with this foreign material. Summed up foreign material has gotten into engine, melted after a period of time and caused restriction in some and/or all oil passages...advised that internal damage may have taken place from lack of lubrication. We recommended engine rebuilding and/or replacement."

I am now in the process of receiving a rebuilt engine to the tune of $6200. I have been trying to determine whether something was dropped into the oil spout at time of service (but this seems unlikely due the amount of plastic pieces found). I spoke with my local Saturn dealership and they stated there are no plastic gears in the engine. However, they were unsure of the oil pump's internal parts. They advised that it could be an oil filter (which is composed of black plastic). They stated that the 2002 Vue takes an oil filter with a plastic nipple on the end, whereas the 2003 does not. If the wrong filter was installed, the nipple could have partially blocked the oil and melted either the filter or some other part (perhaps in the oil pump?). The auto shop is trying to determine whether the original shop installed the proper filter or not.

Does anyone have any idea where these plastic pieces could have come from?