Well, finally had a chance to start pulling things off the truck in a proper shop.

Failures in every direction...

-Oil pump leaking from harmonic balancer... harmonic balancer deeply grooved.

-Two broken chain tensioners lodged behind the timing chain cover with golf ball sized formations of sludge (no joke)

-Pulled the valve covers... all you could see was the springs and tops of rocker arms... every valley, nook and cranny was FILLED with gritty sludge... it looked like piles, upon piles, of burnt barbecue sauce. I have never seen anything like it, and my buddy who is a autoshop teacher says the same.

I can't believe this thing ran. At any rate.... NEW ENGINE ORDERED.

Pics to corroborate my story

 

Thanks for the update Parker. Sorry to hear what you've found.

How long have you owned the truck? What oil and oil change interval was used?

 

Only two months... I bought it on a gamble, p/o was complaining about oil pressure sweep. Thought I might get lucky and rto place the sensor... With a new engine, it's still a 3200 investment so I'm happy

I just can't believe how much crap was in the cylinder heads... Guy must have run original oil for years!!

 

I would say old owner used the cheapest oil possible a synthetic or 50/50 oil does not give you sludge. I suggested pulling the valve covers at the start but I know pulling the valve covers is no easy task on a 4.7 so you avoided it.

You may have been able to save it if you had looked at the start then blasted out the sludge with a garden hose and many cans of brake cleaner. Sounds wrong blasting the heads with water but as long as you sprayed parts with WD40 and air dried the heads and dumped any water in the pan blocking any rust your OK. Same timing chain only use brake cleaner no water then new chain and tensioner. Next would be a few oil changes with a quality thin cleaning oil every month 2 times then back to normal.

This sounds weird and wrong using water but as long as you make sure to dry everything out well and do this ASAP FAST your good dont let water pool up in the pan or anywhere. Replacing the Valve Adjusters would have been a must as they were probably gummed up bad and garbage.

It may have saved the engine and given you a few years out of the engine or not A GAMBLE YES but worth a try cheaper then a new engine.

 

other vids are available

 

I appreciate the videos and your advice... for the record, the truck has been sitting in my driveway since I bought it... there was no way I was driving it around with no oil pressure and all that racket it was making. I started it half a dozen times with a schwack load of sea foam and engine restore to see if I could quiet it down before tearing it apart.

I think your idea of saving the heads isn't a bad one, but with the entire head area crammed with dirt and burnt oil... and the cam lobes showing extreme wear... and with the timing chain area packed with oil.... it just goes on and on... we figured to have the heads hot tanked, the block cleaned, new parts etc... was going to equal the cost of a remanufactured engine.... best have the pro's break it down as a core when the engine comes.

I think the pictures will support a lost cause, this engine was gone a long time ago.

 

I worked on one years ago that looked like that. It wasn't that the oil was never changed. In fact, it was changed every 3000 miles since new (truck had 80k miles on it). The problem was that the owner lived less than two miles from work and drove it back and forth every day for 20 years. Other than an occasional road trip, the poor engine never even got warmed up. It had no way to burn off any moisture, so it all turned to sludge.

 

Yep. Seen many engines killed this way.

Running on Methanol, we have to do everything we can to burn the moisture out of the oil. We run 15 inches of crankcase vacuum to pull any fumes and evaporative moisture out, and we shut it down on a 110/pump gas blend to get water temps to 200 before shutting it off in the trailer.

 

Videos like this help us to really see what we can do as drivers that dont look into caring for our engines. Amazing job though.

 

thanks guys, I'm going back to the shop tomorrow morning to complete the engine removal and preparing for the new one... have to say, pretty excited to be putting in a new heart into this thing... jesus will I be treating it like my 2nd born I guess.

I'll be sure to take lots of pictures and post them on this thread.

Again, thanks for the comments and advice.

Oil pickup tube (including crapp and chain guide pieces which continually fell out of the engine as we rotated the carrier)



Valve Cover (This is after much cleaning out of crap)



Buttoning up new engine