My 392 Hemi had similar amount of sludge inside, only it was probably in a more advanced state, namely rubber! Nothing but good old lye was needed to get it removed dissolved. Believe me I tried a lot of stuff.
short trips, bad oil, and infrequent oil changes cause that. as a kid, i cleaned and s****ed lots of that for my dad and uncle while they made the repair for the customer.
The all time worst was a '61 Plymouth that came in for a leaky valve cover gasket. It had the slant six, was a little noisy and ran rough. So I pull the valve cover and the valve springs were barely visible and one of the valve springs was either collapsed or broken. I think the sludge kept the valve from dropping. I called my boss over, he said, put the cover back on, we're not touching it. Evidently the lady drove it around town, her husband had a company car and didn't believe in oil changes. Bob
The deposits aren't really hurting anything where they are. Rather than running any of that **** through the engine in an effort to get rid of it, I would just keep driving until it's time to take it apart.
Oh yeah, disturbing the mess can clog up the oil screen fast. Even reaming the oil return holes can get you in trouble. Any time I did that, I'd toss in a quart of MMO, run it around town to warm it up and dump the oil and filter. Sieve the drainage through a shop rag and you'll see what washes out. Bob
I wouldnt ad any type cleaner to run in it till you get 95% of the gunk out.Ive got a old shop vac i use just for this type clean up.Put clean rags in any hole that the gunk can fall thru and s****e it with the shop vac beside or in front of what your s****ing.Iwouldnt want that stuff deluted and going thru the bearings,clean up first.I had a 318 ply that could be sister to your gunk problem. Good luck and pull the pan also...............................YG
The biggest problem with running ATF, motor flush, etc. through the engine is that it will loosen up small chunks of sludge...which generally make their way to the oil pump pickup. At this stage, the safest thing to do is to remove everything you can from the heads & valley; then pull the oil pan and do the same thing. Try to get the internal areas of the block as well. Re***emble it, adding a new oil pump AND pickup (or dis***emble the old one, clean it, and check it for wear). If you feel brave, then try the ATF or engine flush.
I have never EVER found anything like that amount of sludge in an engine ... with the oil not ... ahhhhh ..... flowing overly well, how much wear would one find in the cylinders? I can't help but wonder if these things would be worn beyond repair.
I made a trip to Oil City PA years ago. Pennzoil offices and Quaker State offices were just blocks apart. Both got their crude out of the same ground and today they are ......
I agree with the past few posters....probably. If the sludge is crispy and crusty, as in lack of oil changes, I would try to get it out of there. If it's greasy and gooey, as in paraffin-based oil, I'd leave it alone as long as oil is getting to the upper-end of the engine. Moving engine parts LIKE greasy and gooey!! It's us humans who find it unsightly.
They sure didn"t do much maintanence on that Caddy.After you get all that **** out you"ll probably hear everything in that engine.That much gunk,I"d pull the engine and do it right,back in the day all the non-detergent oils did that and as said earlier if someone heard a little tapping in an engine they would throw a can of STP in it and drive on. STP=Stop That Pounding.
espo35 ... gotta say, if I knew the insides of my engine looked like that there is no way in the world I could just leave it be. I am not saying you are wrong, what I am saying is I would not feel comfortable and confident (when driving my car) that I would make it there and back. Sure, it didn't get that bad overnight so the engine is obviously used to running when full of crud ... I just couldn't drive something I knew looked like that (I'd be too worried about whether or not the oil is making its way out of the pan OR is the oil making its way back to the pan). I know the old "if it ain't broke don't fix it" but ... well, just not for me in this instance.
I've run into this a few times, I had a shop close to a retirement area, a lot of the seniors would bring their cars in to work on them, I don't think any of them drove more than a 2 mile trip. We would s****e all the Gunk we could get out and then move it to the wash bay and pressure wash all the **** out with the oil plug removed and man what a mess. We would then use rislone every oil change after that. We bought that stuff by the case. I mean what will it hurt nothing in there will rust... Have fun
I hear you. It's hard not to impose human emotions upon our machines. I wouldn't want to show up to church with a greasy T-shirt and beer on my breath...therefore the inside of my machine should be tidy as well. Pigs wallow in **** worse than oil sludge all day long, yet their bacon tastes mighty fine!
DAMN, I have never seen one this bad. This Opened my eyes. I run quaker state should I be worried or should I switch? …………Not trying to start a GREAT DEBATE here or nothing, because I’m sure everyone has there own opinion. But would it be wise to switch? If so to what brand?
Before th PCV most engines even with oil changes would have sludge. The oil wasnt a good back inthe fifties. Short trips where the engine didnt warm up made sludge worse. and 160 degree thermostats where common. And pennzoil and quaker state are black oils and seen to make sludge more easily. I would pull the pan and clean the oil pump ect. Change the oil & filter often .Retrofit a PCV and install a Frantz TP oil filter. I would use rotella oil if it was mine. Y block fords it was always claimed that the cam bearings where spun causing the rockers to not recieve oil. they used external lines overhead oilers as a fix. Ive tore down several never a spun cam bearing just sludge stopping the oil p***ages. OldWolf
I'd stay close to home and propably try and get that crud out as soon as possible if I cared about the engine at all. The money in dinosaur DNA would likely pay for a rebuild!
I see a lot of Quaker State bashing here. Back in the day, while Pennzoil was paraffin-based, Quaker State used to advertise that it was made of "pure Pennsylvania crude". Now, that would be shale oil....same as everyone else EXCEPT Pennzoil... Am I mistaken?
Years ago I bought a 73 Olds from my Brothers Father in law. I drove it for a couple of weeks and after driving it on the freeway for an extended time it started to smoke so bad that I pulled off of the freeway and checked the oil. It was 2 quarts low on the dip stick. I added 2 quarts and on drove home. The next time I got on the freeway after a few minutes all of the cars behind me dissapeared in a cloud of smoke. I pulled off onto the sholder and by the time I had stopped the smoking stopped. I turned around and started home and when I got up to speed the smoking started again. I pulled off of the freeway and proceded home on surface streets and the smoke stopped again. After a few hours I checked the dip stick and found that it was 1 1/2 quarts too full. Thinking that there was water in the crank case I drained it to find that the oil was dirty but had no water in it. I pulled the valve covers and found that they looked like your Cadillac. I pulled the intake and the pan and s****ed all of the sludge out. During this process I discovered the cause of the oil level variations and the smoke. During continuous high speed driving oil would build up in the valve covers because the sludge had almost totally clogged the oil return holes in the head and block. This accounted for my overfilling the oil. After the oil built up in the valve covers I had pulled the dipstick which showed 2 quarts low. Later after the slowly drained down it showed 1 1/2 quarts high. The oil smoke was the result of the oil gitting so high in the valve cover that the PVC valve was ****ing oil right into the intake. Amazing how much smoke a big block Olds puts out when large amounts of oil are ****ed into the intake. I'm lucky no one had an accident when the first incident occured. Anyway the way I cleaned up the oil returns was by using the spiral cover to a lawn mower throttle cable. I poured solvent into the return holes and ran the cable cover down the hole with a drill motor. It was no easy matter because the sludge and partially coked due to engine heat. The spiral on the cable cover works like a screw. I would run it in then back it out untill I had it clear. After cleaning the engine as much as I could without a total tear down I ran high detergent oil thru it. The first oil change after only a couple of hundred miles still came out black. After that I had no problems. I suspect that my Brothers Father in law changed the oil at the prescribed times because he was that way but I suspect that he never ran the car on the freeway or at any speed above 35mph.
The guys who say nay on breaking it up and running it thru the engine are right, that stuff will plug up and burn up an engine fast. You can bet your engine looks like that hemi on the bottom. Since the engine is probably in the car, pulling the pan probably isn't the easiest task, but one well worth it! Plug those holes and get busy with a plastic s****er and a shop vac. I had to hot tank that hemi twice. =o)
People have a "thing" about clean engines. You see commercials appealing to that. While it's good to avoid the deposits pictured, unless they are blocking oil return there is no harm done. Sure, the valley could be carefully cleaned out, but what about the crankcase, rocker area and covers, and the stuff that is laying in the bottom of the pan? Without opening everything up it is not possible to remove the majority of those deposits. As was posted, disturbing or attempting to melt away that mess is much more likely to cause more problems than solved. Not only is there a risk of chunks obstructing the oil pick-up, why would you want to melt that mess and run it through the bearings, lifter to cam interface, hydraulic lifters, etc? That's going to cause a lot more trouble than just leaving things as they are. The is little or no correlation between those deposits and engine wear. The first time I saw an engine like this one was a 331 Cadillac I took apart in my teens, but it was worse than this one. Although the car the engine came from ran fine and had good oil pressure, I ***umed I would find the engine totally worn out when I opened it up and saw all the goo inside. In spite of having a lot of miles the engine turned out to have surprisingly little wear. The crank was still within spec, the bores were not worn a lot for the miles on the engine, nothing about the engine was worn out. I eventually became a mechanic and then an engine builder. From time to time I encountered an engine with heavy deposits. Although some of them were worn out, as with my Cadillac engine, the presence of heavy deposits was not an indicator one way or the other as to the engines condition.
used to be a big topic 60 years age when people wanted to switch to detergent type oils. the popular consensus in 1955 was start your new cars on detergent but leave to older cars on nondertergent because the detergent in older cars would break loose all the crud and block all the oil p***ages. I think yours is proof enough for me.
There is a never-ending dispute as to the pros and cons of different oil bases, I'm sure that's not going to be resolved here. What can say from first hand experience is; There was a time when other oils, including synthetic, were inadequate for some engines, or resulted in noticeably more wear. For reasons I'll let others debate, using the old Pensylvajnia based Kendall in those engines made the difference. Like Quaker State and Pennzoil, Kendall was also made from Pennsylvania crude. For reasons unknown Kendall was noticeably better. You might be surprised that oil company sponsored cars often don't use the product(s) they promote. Yes, they will have the right cans, but you don't know what's actually in them. At one time that mystery oil would have been that waxy Kendall.
Thanks all for reading this. DAWFORD (I had the time of my life in Temecula by the way) I know exactly what you mean about the drain holes clogged up and letting oil build up under the V/C's as thats what happened first here. I braided safety wire, then twisted it down the drain holes repeatedly, catching all the rubberized sludge. That got the oil to drain back good. Im sure the bottom end looks like ****, it looks like I can drop the pan after the draglink is removed so I'll be doing that tomorrow morning when I get off work at 8am. I'll post more pics as well...
The problem with using non-detergent is that it's hard to find the right stuff. Non-detergent oil is generally used for things like lawn mowers and air compressors. Because of that, the grade of non-detergent generally available isn't as good as "regular" off the shelf detergent oil. Some aircraft engines require non-detergent oil. Not cheap, but that's the best non-detergent I know of.
I worked at a gas station in my youth, and a granny came in driving a mid 60's Olds for an oil change. The sticker date was three years old. Pulled the plug and...........nothing.........waited and waited......still nothing. Stuck a screwdriver up the hole and it went in an inch before oil was struck. Now how was oil getting to the pickup tube? Little old ladies........whoda thunk it?
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