I was hoping you could help me, or point me in the right direction. We have a newer vintage GE 600HP vertical pump motor that has issues with the lower guide bearing oil reservior. We believe we have build debris left over from new manufacture in the reservior (new motor manufactured in 1998, installed in the plant in 2005), and that debris gets suspended when we dynamically sample the oil. We get consistently high ferrous index and particle count numbers, no matter how often we sample and change the oil. Obviously we are interested in whether or not the motor is making metal from bearing wear or degradation, or whether we are dealing with build debris only. We don't see any bearing defect issues with Vibration, and we would like to take care of the issue without pulling the motor. We have done an oil drain and refill (after a motor run and the debris is suspended) a couple of times with no appreciable change in the oil characteristics.

We would like to perform a more aggressive (but safe) oil flush technique to clean the reservoir and agitate any build debris enough to push it out the drain port. We are using Mobil DTE 797 oil, and like most vertical pump motors, the oil sample/drain port is NOT the lowest portion of the reservior. The reservoir size is 2.5 quarts.

Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated!

Just place a magnetic rod in the reservoir close to the suction and you will have peace for many years extracting all the metal that might be generated in the system
oneeyeindustries.com

Matt,

You can not flush reservoir. It's impossible to get any flow much less any decent Reynolds number. You can rinse it (fill up @ drain) till cows come home, and still will achieve nothing. The only solution is to get your hands dirty and physically wipe this reservoir clean. From that point on you will be able to test the oil and track/trend iron or any other contaminants generated by the system or ingressed from the environment.

In relation to whether you are seeing wear debris or metal from build, this is a relatively simple process of doing ferrographic oil analysis where they study the actual metal particle. The laboratory can tell you if it is sliding, spalling or machining type wear debris.

couldn't agree with OTTO34 more.
eclipse magnetics