I finished the job before I read your post, KiwiME. The Shell video is very interesting.
The oil I took out this morning has been in there for 250km.
There was a very slight amount of fine debris on the magnet. You wouldn't expect much more given the low mileage and the fine-ness of the particles, as previously discussed. I fumbled the plug a bit as I was removing it and inadvertently wiped part of the magnet (the top right quarter in the pic), but over half of it was undisturbed. I wiped what was on my finger onto the face of the plug - you can see that in the pic as well.
Because I hadn't yet read your post I didn't think to check the magnet for security. But I did vigorously clean it with a rag and felt nothing untoward.
Re the silicon and the FB contributor: That offers a credible explanation for the silicon content in the oil.
I know there is no dirt ingress, which is the other explanation for the presence of silicon, unless it was introduced during manufacture which is highly unlikely, one would hope. I read your magazine excerpt about OEM techniques not necessarily being the best, including breathers open to the environment. But this one would be no different to the 12 or so cars I have owned and maintained (DIY) over the years, none of which displayed an issue such as this. I am not particularly worried about the silicon now.
But I AM concerned about the aluminium, especially following your comments about the possibility of bearings moving in their housings. I suppose there's not much that can be done about that on our own cars except perhaps split the transmission and use bearing locating compound to glue them in place


. Loctite makes one, but the task is not for me, I'm afraid!! If the need arises I hope it will be under warranty, and if it's outside warranty I will use these pages and the oil tests as ammunition for an ex-warranty FOC repair. (Similar to my BT50 engine that catastrophically failed 2 years and 20k outside warranty. That replacement cost Mazda about $20k. Amazingly, they barely flinched.)
Here is the 250km old oil. Though it looks dark in the bottle, very similar to the OEM fluid that I removed 10 days ago, it is much lighter when you observe it in the drain pan - you can actually see the bottom of the pan through it which was not possible with the OEM fluid.
I am disturbed by the amount of colloidal metal in this 250km flush. I didn't expect as much as I got. Some of it will be as a result of the flush but I suspect a good proportion is new material. You can see it a bit in the two pics of the drain pan (the curvey lines that look like ripples near the filter drain post in the left pic and near the 45* corner of the pan in the right pic), but it was impossible to get a good pic without reflections - the camera sees more of those than the eye does, unfortunately. The straight bars in the left pic are the corrugations in the pan.

