In article ,
"O. Sami Saydjari" wrote:

Sure, it kept the stuff out of the bearings. But the oil pump
is upstream of the filter, and all that metal garbage went through it
and chewed it up. "Fixing up" the engine is spending money on an
engine that will fail again very shortly, if it generates any oil
pressure at all. Nothing less than complete teardown is necessary
here.


Yes, seems reasonable, painful as that conclusion is.
Price tag: $21K (plus labor). Gulp.

I can only offer my own experience. My club had an Archer which showed
metal in the oil filter. The engine had about 1300 SMOH, and this was
the third run on the engine. We tried pulling cylinders and opening the
oil pump trying to find the problem and ended up just throwing a lot of
good money after bad. In the end, we racked up a lot of shop bills and
still had to get a new engine.

IHMO, the aviation gods have smiled upon you. They made the engine last
long enough to get you safely on the ground so you could write that $21k
check. The alternative could have been much worse.