5.3l metal in oil and my nightmare!!!!!

[texas81camaro]

Ok I feel I am an experienced engine builder, I've built probably into the hundreds of small blocks and big blocks and blah blah blah. With this being said I am losing my flipping mind with my TB. At 80k miles I started hearing a tapping/knocking noise that followed with RPM from idle to around 2200RPM. The noise progressively got worse/louder, I guess with the stethoscope the aluminum block reverberates the sound through the entire engine so I could never really pin-point the area it was coming from. Fast forward 30k miles and about 8 months to a week and a half ago. I changed the oil on the truck and found metal in the oil and in the filter media. They seemed to be aluminum some about 1/8 in in diameter, to put it nicely and forum friendly this greatly aggravatedhttp://gmtnation.com/images/smilies/hissyfit.gif. So, I immediately started pulling the motor(by the way the front diff. going through the oil pan is about the most insane thing I have ever seen). So tonight with the engine out I started to disassemble and inspect looking for the smoking gun if you will. Only problem is, . . . I cant find it! http://gmtnation.com/images/smilies/confused.gifI pulled the front cover and chain, pan, valley tray, and eventually the heads. I found a lot of metal granules around the center head bolt wells and flakes in the lifter wells. I gave the rods a wiggle on the crank and all seem tight. The crank spins freely and quietly. The cam and cam bearings look good and it doesn't look wiped(will verify this in the AM with the mic). The lifters and especially the DOD's look like poop, lots of shiny spots around where they run in and out of the trays and oil deposits around the DOD lifter spring/locking thingys. SOOOOO, the real question is could this much metal come from the lifters some how, and what next i.e. pull caps individually and inspect/replace bearings, full rebuild? BTW piston tops were heavily deposited, probably due to the oil sucking in the intake and burning up. Cylinder walls look great, I did notice the driver side rocker/spring well looked oil deprived, a lot more burnt up oil and deposits. Thanks! I'm new here so I can't wait to hear what y'all have to say!

 

[jrSS]

Usually on SS' (ls2)....the rod bearing will go due to lack of oil with the shitty oil pan design. Usually a copper metal flake will apear with a loud rod knock. The 5.3 is virtually the same block....just smaller pistons and so on. Get on tbssowners.com and they can point you in a better direction due to this forum mainly being 4.2 i6.