[ChuckJ01a]

I’m trying to help my nephew’s son Zach with his 2010 Camaro which has the LLT V6 engine. About 6 months ago it died while idling and wouldn’t start. It would only crank in short spurts. A local shop pulled the plugs, oiled the cylinders, and tried to turn the engine with a breaker bar on the crank bolt. It would turn with difficulty to a point and stop (Since then we have verified this condition. It will still crank in short spurts with a fully charged battery.). Shop wanted to call it quits at that point and install a re-manufactured Jasper engine to the tune of almost $8,000! We took the car home.

We have read about all the oil consumption, timing chains and oiling problems associated with this engine. The shop said the engine was low on oil. We decided to see if it was hopefully a chain issue. The oil was drained and strained and practically no debris was found, no more than you might expect with any oil draining. The filter was cut open and significant debris was found in the paper element (pictures attached). This debris is silver and magnetic, doesn’t look like any bearing material I’ve ever seen. The front cover was pulled and everything with respect to all three chains looks okay and absolutely no debris of any kind is present at the front of the engine or in the cams areas.

This started me thinking about the oil pump. I’m assuming the oil goes directly from the pump to the filter, my first question? Also, could the oil pump have possibly failed and be the main problem?

My thinking right now is to go through the process to pull the lower timing chain and remove the oil pump. Then, rotate the engine at the crank to see if it is freed up any with the oil pump removed. My next question is can the engine be rotated without the cams connected? Is it a non-interference engine? The warnings in the Chilton manual would indicate that you cannot rotate the engine this way without getting the valves into the pistons.

Any thoughts or guidance would be greatly appreciated. I realize also that if the oil pump did fail, it could have created additional problems that may still require pulling the engine. Thanks to everyone in advance for helping out a new member of the forum.