I'm planning to pull the intake/valve cover and clean the valley and pull the pan and de-sludge it. Hopefully straight forward. Will be messy. The issue is de-sludging the sludge traps in the crankshaft. There are 4 of them. These plugs can be drilled and pulled out with a dent puller or tapped for a 1/2" bolt and pulled with a bolt threaded into it. The question is whether to replace in-kind or tap and installed a threaded plug like on the lincoln EL engines. I plan to do this with the engine in the car. Has anyone done this?
I don’t know what a sludge trap is but if you remove the intake and pan flush it all out the bottom. Clean up the pan and pickup. Clean up the oil pump or replace We’ve used diesel and kerosene Wipe out the valley. Rotate and make sure the valves aren’t stuck Seal back up. It’s been done many times
I’ve got a y block on my engine stand. Hasn’t ran in decades. low mile engine. I just checked a couple bearings. Journals and bearings look good and they had good clearances from a plastigauge check. I’ll tear down, clean and re***emble. Tear down the heads, lap valves and install new seals. Back in the day we used kerosene, diesel or mineral spirits to clean parts. Everything is marked, carefully removed and reinstalled back to its original position.
Unless you are going to boil and brush the crank, don’t remove those plugs. Just do as said above, clean with kerosene from the valley, seal it up again, then refill the oil through the pressure port with a funnel and hose. It will take quite a while, but it will put the oil right where it needs to be. Then change it again an hour after starting it.
I'm not seeing the need to pop those plugs out and then put them back and risk one popping out on it's own. I've done the same thing hat Anthony said, used Diesel to flush out an engine that the sludge was in the shape of the valve cover around the rockers when I pulled the valve covers . I dug a coffee can full of sludge out with a putty knife and old s**** before I pulled the pan and put a big drain pan under it and did a lot of cleaning and flushing. After I got that one back together my buddy changed oil in it about every 1000 miles for a year until he was satisfied that it was decently clean inside. I think that all the previous owner ever did was drive it and wash it as it looked great but had more issues than ten cars should have.
I used a cheap garden sprayer. The sort with a plastic bottle and pump on top - Remove the spray wand and attach the hose to the engine port. Fill with oil of your choice and pump up some pressure. These do not hold pressure well, so I gave a few pumps each time I went past. Primes a motor perfectly - instant oil pressure on start up.
I always vote to pull the engine if it's that dirty. Removing and replacing those plugs while lying under the car sounds tedious. It's all fun, though........we gotta keep busy.
My plan is to do all of this but not sure about the oil pump. Here is info from the original shop manual.
Not sure how dirty it is. 61K original miles and has not run in at least 10 years. Hoping for the best, planning for less.
I recently got my Mercury 255 Flathead running after sitting for about 10 or more years. It never had a oil filter on it so after the first couple oil changes I could stick my finger in the drain plug hole and feel and pull out about a half inch of sludge and junk. I've driven it a couple hundred miles to that point and have changed the oil at least once a week and still black is night and dirty so I decided to finally drop the oil pan. What I found was about a half inch thick of sludge in the bottom. Cleaned it all out and put it all back together. Since then I changed the oil once and drove it another hundred miles and changed it again and it's a ton cleaner. I believe all the Sledge was also thinning out the oil pretty bad and it was causing it to leak pretty good. Now after a hundred mile run it has about a dime-sized drop on the ground which is awesome instead of a cup. Just my experiences
At the time that manual was written motor oils were non-detergent. Modern oil with detergent will prevent that build up, you should not have to do an annual de-sludge clean up, once you get it cleaned up as the guys already explained. I don't believe I would be pulling those plugs with the crankshaft in the engine, in the car. I would clean it up as discussed above and count on the detergents in the new oil to clean up the internal p***ages.
Fill it up with Diesel, Pan to Carb for a couple of Days. That'll soften all that **** up and even let some of it make it's way to the bottom. Drain it. Then flush it with Diesel with the Pan off while scrubbing that Goo out of it. Then run Kerosene through it. This will get most of it. DO NOT PULL THOSE PLUGS OUT UNLESS YOU ARE GOING FULL TILT REBUILD. You'll never get all that **** out and it has metal in it from break in or god forbid a prior destructive event if it wasn't cleaned properly. Let it be. Also if it's got a starter on it and the Oil Pump Works when you are done cleaning it run some light weight oil (hydraulic works good) through the system with the starter turning the engine. Then dump that out and it should be clean as a whistle and have some lube in it and on the wear surfaces. Dump all that out, fill it with good 30 weight with zinc in it, some Marvel Mystery Oil, and run it. Good luck - Tim
Pulling the plugs with engine in car is useless. You have to pull the crank, pull the plugs, clean every hole and drilling thoroughly, flush several times and install back into engine. If you only pull the plugs and clean the holes, a lot of the ac***ulated **** will find its way into the drillings that feed the bearing shells - with disastrous results. I am rebuilding another french flathead right now and every hole was half filled with sludge - after just 300 hrs from the last service. So for me there is no question: always pull the crank and clean it inside out and be sure that nothing expensive will happen in a short time....
If you disturb the sludge in the crank you are at high risk of it coming loose and ruining the crank and bearings. There's old hardened junk in there, too. Due to poor maintenance and the quality of the oil back when, extended oil changes would really **** up the Y block engines. The only proper way to clean the p***ages in a crank is to remove the plugs, run a 22 caliper or similar br*** gun cleaning brush through the holes and scrub like hell. Squirting some Gunk in there helps, too. Keep scrubbing until no more black stuff comes out and rinse 'em out under pressure. Better yet, send it in and get it hot tanked and cleaned. Otherwise leave it alone. Improper cleaning can do more damage than leaving it. By the way, those aren't sludge traps, they're oil p***ages.
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