I just drained the oil on my 1951 mercury flathead. The motor runs fine. It has a drain hole big enough I can stick my little finger inside. The bottom of the pan , I can feel, has 1/4 inch heavy sludge. I just finished reading what is required to pull the pan. Removal of starter, removal of steering linkage, possible jacking of engine, etc. I don’t have a car lift and I don’t trust local car shops. I think the best and certainly easier route is to pour a gallon of solvent (acetone?) in and let it sit for a few days. Never start the engine. Then drain it, stick in a coat hanger with rag attached and do my best to wipe it. Then add new oil a filter and repeat after 100 miles. Does this sound like a logical approach? Is there a better way? All advice appreciated.
I'd leave it be. Anything you knock loose that doesn't come out is going straight to the pickup screen. Get enough of that and you will be pulling the pan to clean the screen.
I had a buddy that would drain the oil, overfill by 2 qrts of diesel fuel, pull the coil wire and crank the motors over for several minutes. Wait 20 minutes and do it all again. He would do this several times then drain it out, with plug out he'd run the diesel thru a paint strainer and pour it thru the valve cover again to wash some more out. Then change oil and filter, drive for a couple hundred miles and do it all again until he was happy with how clean the diesel fuel came out. Watched him do this many times with old trucks and cars he bought. Watched him do it to a 67 Chevy p.u. with a 6cyl and he drove it for about 10 yrs and over 100,000 miles he put on it himself. Old farm truck with about 50,000 miles when he bought it and never looked like the farmer ever changed the oil... So I did it to an old Pontiac 389 I had, drove it 3 yrs before I wrecked it... ...
2 quarts of marvel mystery oil let it sit and run, do that afew times and drain the oil... put a quart in every oil change
My great uncle on the flatheads and cars without oil filters would add one quart of kerosene or diesel fuel to the oil then let it idle for about 10 minutes then drain the oil. Refill and away you go. Every oil change. Opened his Standard Oil gas station in 1927. Retired in 1974.
Loosening all that will lilely cause more harm than good . Anything you dump in that involves running the engine as it loosens up or dosent come compleatly out that drain hole in a non running flush is going to be circulating over and over untill the next oil change . Seen more than a few times were guys adding stuff to try and free up stuck lifters end up with spun rod bearings , oil pressure loss and everything else shortly after. Drop the pan do it right IMO. Rislone was what my grandfather used in his shop for customers in the 50's It's still sold today . Susposed to slowly remove deposits . He had a big barrel of it still when he died a few years ago .
As someone who has resurrected probably a 150 dead cars in my lifetime almost all from the partial flow or no oil filter era. A quarter inch of sludge isn't bad. Now that being said, as soon as I know it's there I would want it out of there because My paranoia would get the best of me. There are a few approaches if you drive the car pretty often. Number one is use a high detergent motor oil run it for about a thousand miles then change the oil and change that oil when it's hot that way a good portion of the nastiness is going to be suspended in the oil, do that three or four times and you will probably get most of it out since it's only a quarter inch of nastiness. Now that being said some people on this website are going to be against using a modern oil I don't generally fear that stuff but I know some people insist on using non-detergent ZDDP additive type oils. Number two and the more correct way to do it, personally I would unbolt the engine from the front engine mounts take my engine hoist and basically hang the engine in the air where the transmission is pretty much pushed all the way against the transmission tunnel / firewall and I would unbolt the oil pan, I am not familiar with your car so I'm not sure if that would get it out or not but I have to say no matter what I would do my best to get that oil pan out of that car and fully and completely clean it then reseal the oil pan via new gasket and rear main seal. Don't look at it It's a huge job look at it as a job to get you cruising reliably. Number three and honestly probably the best method It's just ignore it like you never saw it and just keep driving it, Now that being said it's probably not the smartest idea but it is an option and it realistically will probably be just fine since it took 70+ years to get that sludge in that pan in the first place.
do not under any circumstances try and remove it by adding solvent (kerosene) or another products to put it back into solution, you will wreck your engine. when its in circulation the only place it can go is through the bearings. In the days before modern detergent oils, and oil filters, this was how carbon and lead deposits separated out of the oil. The only way to remove it was to drop the pan. Nowadays this material is kept in solution n the oil and removed by the oil filter.
A lift is nice, but a floor jack and stands work to get under a car. Ramps as well. We’ve all (I still do) work on my/our backs in the driveway.
On a note to my comment above and to "29 gizmos" comment below mine about not using solvent... I have a real short story about that and a life lesson. When I was 21ish years old My father (RIP) who was a mild car guy (that knew engines intimately from his youth) and a mechanical engineer by trade spoke to me against using engine flush on a 1972 Plymouth Fury that had a 318 that I bought for a girl that I was dating back then, he told me it would more than likely plug something up like an oil gallery to the maind. I looked at him like he was crazy after all I was a know-it-all gearhead kid and although I knew a lot for my age group I didn't have the life experience to learn from and God forbid I would listen to my father lol Anyways on to the story, I had never seen a car with so much gunk/carbon inside the valve covers as I did that old Plymouth, I don't think it probably ever had an oil change but it ran like a champ and ironically had decent oil pressure, honestly it was a fairly nice car for what it was but that's another story, One day after about probably 3:00 or 4 months of her daily driving the car, I took the valve cover off to repair an oil leak when I had the valve cover off I chipped most of the carbon out of the valve spring area and vacuumed it up I honestly had it pretty clean in there and I even went and did the other side... I worked at Kragen's back then (Now part of O'Reilly's) so I was pretty much familiar with every product available at that time so I bought some gunk brand engine flush that came in a 1 quart metal can kind of like an old oil can, I followed the directions exactly and poured the quart of crap in the engine put it in the engine and ran it for I believe it was 10 or 15 minutes, then I drained the oil and replaced the oil with good Valvoline 20/50 racing oil. The girl I was dating drove the car to work the next day and when it came home that evening and the car was extremely clattery, My old man saw the car as she pulled up at the same time I saw it and he looked at me and he said you put an engine flush in the engine didn't you? I felt like George Washington I told him I could not tell a lie and I did, My old man's response was classic, he took a long drag off of cigarette he looked at me and calmly said "well you'll be pulling an engine this weekend". Long story short he was not wrong, when I disassembled the engine some of that hardened black carbon had came loose and plugged up the oil gallery fed the passenger side rocker arm assembly every lifter in that engine made noise. On the plus side is the engine gunk did do a fairly good job of removing that garbage I would say the engine was moderately clean considering what the valve cover look like when I started It wasn't bad... But I learned a valuable lesson that day not to flush a really gunky engine, I think if the engine overall isn't in terrible shape engine flush is a great idea but if the engine you know for sure is pretty slimed up I think it's a bad idea. The car, the broad and my father are all long gone out of my life now but that memory could have happened just a few days ago as It is so vivid and I am now just a few years younger than my father was back then when he gave me that advice that I didn't take and there is two takeaways of the story number one is always listen to your parents, The second is engine flush or products like that I do not recommend putting in a scuzzy engine. I do believe in routine oil changes and using high detergent motor oil and changing the oil more often because oil is literally engineered to suspend filth and if the oil is warm there is a good chance you may pull some of it out every time you do an oil change.
Valvoline has a oil that has been out for a while that is supposed to clean a motor better than older detergent oils do. https://shop.valvolineglobal.com/pr...RIPPMtzbmv6yG3elFTPAPD5TNx2s7aLlz1qtL-xnmgk3a
> >I just drained the oil on my 1951 mercury flathead. > >, I can feel, has 1/4 inch heavy sludge.> >
Bought a truck with a 352. Ran great Drove it daily about 4/6 months and it lost compression on a cyl. Pulled the valve cover and the engine was completely stopped up. No oiling on the top end. If I would have cleaned it up earlier it might still be running that 352. Pulled a 292 out of a scrap truck. Ran great. Just did a complete re-seal on it. back in the day, my mechanic uncle did the old diesel fuel trick. We never had a problem doing it that way. A bore scope is cheap now. Take a look. If it’s just that 1/4 and plenty of room for the pump pick up, let it lay. It’s supposed to be there on old engines. The crap settled to the bottom. Yanking a pan on early engines was normal to clean out junk
Have a 1951 Ferguson tractor with the original Continental 4 cyl. engine-never had the pan or valve cover removed! This thing has more sludge (i'm about the 3rd+ owner) than you can imagine, yet runs like a top-and 12 psi oil pressure. I do change the oil once a year (use diesel oil), it always looks good, think it just rides over the sludge. I'm sure the minute i put anything in it to loosen the sludge mud I'd have a broke tractor. My advice is just go with it, think------the 1951 oil didn't carry anything to clean engines.
Buy a gasket set. Pull the engine. Clean it out. It may be a good time to check and grind valves. It may be a good time to check that rear main and clutch components. Do this or don’t worry about it.
If I wasn't gonna pull the pan, I'd leave it alone and start changing the oil frequently. Like every 100 miles, and while the oil is hot. It'll start to clean itself out.
[ E="1biggun, post: 15461253, member: 346257"]Drop the pan do it right IMO.[/QUOTE] They are telling you the right thing to do. Anything else can break stuff loose, but a lot of it will still be in the engine and may or may not result in a future problem. Sometimes you just have to put the effort out to do something the right way if you want to be sure of the result. What will it cost you if the engine ultimately does fail?
What is the oil pump pick up-to-pan clearance spec? Less than 3/8" and you leave yourself very little room for error. Pull the engine and do it correctly.
> >They are telling you the right thing to do. > >>>do it correctly.> > And if you decide to do it right, you're also gonna need specialized tools from the HomeDepot. A roofing cement scoop, a shingle shovel, a set of wood chisels, a sewer snake & a slop bucket for all the pudding, tar & baked on shit that's hidden under the intake manifold.
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