Big Foot Magnetic Oil Plug

[san rensho]

I had a big scare after I installed my mag plug. First oil change after I installed it I decided to pull the sump plate to see what was in there since I've had the car a couple of months and it has 117k miles. I was pleasantly surprised. Very clean with only a very few (less than ten) very small bits of plastic, no ferrous metal at all.

But when I looked at the pickup tube, it had a couple of small spirals of grey white metal shavings stuck in it! I immediately thought something was seriously wrong with the motor. After calming down, i used a magnet on the metal and it wasn't ferrous. So wheere was it coming from? Well I looked at tthe mag plug and I could see that it sticks way up in the sump plate, since the mag plug is much longer than the stock plug. So I'm pretty sure the metal shavings came from the mag plug removing some of the aluminum from the sump plate threads when I installed it.