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Please bear with me, as i haven't been able to link the images i have alluded to in the post (below), but i was hoping someone might have some idea what a bunch of small hard plastic bits sitting in the bottom of the sup could be (about the size of a match head and up to roughly 3/16" square).


When we pulled the sump of my mate's '78 R100S we found all these odd hard plastic bits. Looks like part of them might have made up some sort of bush or gland... note the bits arranged in a circle.


sumpbits by Ducati Pete, on Flickr

Initially we thought they were parts of the cam chain tensioner. But we went in there to discover the tensioner was mostly OK (just some slight wear grooves), see below.


tension.pad by Ducati Pete, on Flickr

So we're stumped... They are a hard black plastic with some moulded surfaces.

Does anyone have any idea what these bits might be and where they might have come from?

oh yeah, the battery wasn't in the sump, it's just there for scale reference.

One thought i had was that perhaps they were from a previous tensioner block that had been subsequently replaced... but the bit of wear on the one we found suggested it was original...

Oh yeah, as well, it appears to be pretty low milage bike. ie little or no apparent wear to be seen on timing gears etc, and it's still on original bore...

pete

Without seeing the pics, my guess is pieces of broken square section o ring from the oil filter. I believe they will go hard after sitting in the sump for some time.

ME 109 wrote:Without seeing the pics, my guess is pieces of broken square section o ring from the oil filter. I believe they will go hard after sitting in the sump for some time.

Aha! That sounds like a pissabolity, given the way Pete described them to me.

Pete, if you can't solve the image issue, send em to me and I'll post them.

For the life of me I've got no idea why the images won't link. They're on flickr, which provides a link address for each image but when i put them in the post they don't show... bloody frustrating!

Thanks anyhow for your ideas, given the lack of data to work from.

I don't think the bits are related to the filter o-rings as they are definitely a hard black PLASTIC...

I'll keep trying to work on linking the images.

pete

woo'hoo just managed to link the images...

err, sorry 'bout how crappy they actually are.

Images are working for me. And yep, intriguing.

DucatiPete wrote:Please bear with me, as i haven't been able to link the images i have alluded to in the post (below), but i was hoping someone might have some idea what a bunch of small hard plastic bits sitting in the bottom of the sup could be (about the size of a match head and up to roughly 3/16" square).


When we pulled the sump of my mate's '78 R100S we found all these odd hard plastic bits. Looks like part of them might have made up some sort of bush or gland... note the bits arranged in a circle.


sumpbits by Ducati Pete, on Flickr


pete

Definitely looks like hardened oil filter seals. That and the cam tension-er are really the only plastic parts in there. How they got in the sump is a mystery to me. They'd have to get past the filter, the oil pump, the main bearings, etc.etc. to get there. They would need to have dropped in there as the filter was being removed. Was a "previous owner" involved? Maybe aftermarket valve stem seals had once been fitted and eventually fell apart. Someone put oil in it, or used a funnel that was contaminated with the bits? I'm grasping at straws here. Maybe someone at the factory accidentally left something in there.

The material bits are made of remind me of an electrical 'bush' that was on bevel drive Ducatis. well, I'm not sure if it was called a bush but that's what i'll call it for now). It was an electrical bush that screwed into an outer cover through which the alternator wiring passed. The bush held a rubber sleeve that compressed when it was tightened thereby not allowing any oil to pass. It's just that, from memory, that 'bush' was made of roughly like material.

An old stem seal? hmm... we did find at least one still on a valve. I'm not sure if there was another. I'll have to ask Glyn.

But: the bits are a hard PLASTIC they are definitely NOT RUBBER.

And some have been moulded into certain shapes/forms...

It's got me buggered... At this stage we'll just be reassembling and wondering...

I'd be more worried about how that battery got in there.

"... battery..." yeah, I knew that'd get a comment...

what i was calling a "bush" in an earlier post is probably actually called a gland nut?