Outdoor Power Equipment and Small Engines - What to do when you find metal shavings in the oil and the motor runs just fine?

What to do when you find metal shavings in the oil and the motor runs just fine? Drain the oil, take the crankcase cover off, clean out the motor, put it back together and run it? Its a 4 yr old Briggs and Stratton 4HP Quattro, put to commercial use.

Has anyone run it while very low on oil? Has anyone fiddled w/ the governor to make it overspeed?
Mike

I'd drain it, fill it, run it awhile, then drain it again with the oil hot to remove all the contaminates you can. Taking the engine apart and cleaning it probably won't do very much more than that, and frankly, I personally wouldn't spend that kind of time on it. Those engines are too inexpensive, and there's a good chance the oil will get contaminated with metal filings soon afterwards anyway. Make sure your air filter is sealing well. It may be ingesting dirt and scoring the cylinder walls.

Of course the oil has been changed regularly correct? just drain and fill, run it, then drain and fill.....

i forgot to mention that it was kinda making a weird noise when i would push the mower, not when i just let it sit. sounded like something bouncing around in the motor, but could be the blade unbalanced hitting the mower housing, anyway

i change it 3 - 4 times every season. its run about 4 - 5 hours a week, on a good week with full sunshine (very rare in vancouver bc, we get a lot of rain)

i've been running it on synthetic oil for the past 1 1/2 years (10W30 full synthetic). The only problem was for the first 2 1/2 years it never had an oil change (for the first two it was run about an hour a week, for the 1/2 year after that it was run 4 - 5 hours a week)

so i see what you're getting at. i'm gonna buy some sae30 to fill it up with, run it a bit, drain the oil out then put synthetic back in and see how it runs.

i also cut off a bit of the governor spring because it felt like it was running too slow. i didn't make it go full speed though (when you hold your finger down on the governor tab and make it go full throttle) just a tiny bit, maybe 100 - 150 rpm's more.

There are also magnetized oil drain plugs that may help, exept for soft metal shavings.