Hey All,

Wanted to say thank you for all the help. I decided to bring it to a mechanic. Oil pump was fine. He started pulling spark plugs and saw #1 was damaged. They were fine upon install so he scoped cylinder 1 and discovered that the connecting rod had broken free. It was connected during rebuild so he believes that the spun bearing damaged the rod and that it failed after start up under normal operating conditions. At this point he says we could try to rebuild but crank is likely damaged, block could be cracked as well so a new engine is more cost effective. Searching around on eBay for a decent deal. I'm going to have him install it and swap out all the new parts I bought for the rebuild.

Hindsight being 20/20, I should have pulled the pistons and inspected for rod damage, especially on the one with the spun bearing. All the videos I watched of an oil pan drop and bearing replacement didn't mention this, likely because compressing the rings from down below would have been difficult, but since I had the head off it would have been easy to re-insert them. Costly mistake.

Thanks again to everyone who took the time to read the saga of my R53 and commented with advice.

 

So sorry to hear about the bad news. At least you now know what the problem was. Hope the rebuild goes well and thanks for sharing your experience with the rest of us.