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Hope you're making good progress. Sounds like you have a lot to investigate but you are finding out a ton of info too. I remember when I had rod knock, the engine would not idle, and it was way clankier than your noise. I could have had it more severe than you, hard to tell. Here's what I found when I took it apart. The sound I was making in the video was what it sounded like in the car but a lot faster obviously. Hope the link works:
For reference, I did a Blackstone analysis on a customer car/motor I built at the end of 2018. After initial start-up and break-in on the dyno (all on the same oil), roughly 2hrs of runtime including tuning through ~200whp:
Aluminum 3ppm
Iron 9ppm
Copper 22ppm
Lead 52ppm
Tin 6ppm
Moly 10ppm
Nickel 0ppm
Your numbers are an order of magnitude higher. Copper and lead means it's bearings and nothing else. You can pull the oil filter apart to confirm, but I would get started on pulling the motor if it were me.
Thanks Savington. Good to have you in here, and good to see a back to back oil analysis to stare at.
I'll keep updating this as I pull the motor out and apart, but that probably won't happen for several weeks as work and school has been crazy, and then I'm out of the country for a while around Thanksgiving.
Caleb - Just more data for you. These are my first two oil samples to Blackstone after a full rebuild. That 50mile column on the right is what you can compare to yours. Yes, your copper, lead and iron are off the chart.
Resolved is a strong word, but I did pull the motor and drop the pan to find a spun bearing on no 2.,.which sent the Miata to the back of my long project list.
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