Changing Plenum gasket today- all was well so far (no broken bolts)...

just now removed the manifold and the engine underneath is much more caked and sludgy then I anticipated....

Some of it is so thick you can pick huge flakes out. I used a plastic spoon to lightly get a bunch of it.
How far should I go with cleaning underneath?
Is there any point since the whole engine probably looks like this?
Is this indicative of any other potentially looming problems?
Anything else I should look for while it's all apart?

I'll be cleaning the manifold for awhile and will check back in a few hours.

Any input appreciated.

**For some quick background - replacing Plenum with Aluminum one from Hughes Engines, replacing o'rings fuel injectors, most of the sensors on the manifold have already been changed but I will be putting in a new thermostat and short water-pump hose too.

 

Use synthetic oil and this won't happen. But all you can do for now is clean up as much as you can, put it all back together, run motor flush through it, then change the oil and filter. For the next several oil changes just be sure to run motor flush through it before doing the change.

 

i switched to full synth about 9 months ago- have changed it three times since.
havn't run any motor flush yet- suggestions? I keep reading about Seafoam...

 

and thanks for getting back..

 

The synthetic will not remove that thick sludge fast enough. The motor flush will do it 100X faster.

 

Just read a pile of accounts from people who swear an additive will do more damage then good. Not to say there aren't many opinion to the contrary. But apparently by releasing so much debris at once; the smaller pathways and stuff can get clogged causing larger problems.

Anyone here have a lot of hands-on, positive experiences using an additive?

and if so. What kind?

 

Scare tactics, as you have a filter that will catch anything before it can get up into the motor and any small passages.

 

agreed


also if you want to drop the pan, you can try to degrease with Zep's Industrial Degreaser


Mix 50/50 with HOT water and pour in everywhere.
Also clean the insides of your pushrods, they are what supplies oil to the top.
If you do the degreaser route, you need to rinse, rinse and rinse somemore.


Good luck.

 

Synthetic oils can still sludge if left in for too long or there is coolant getting into the oil. Their higher temperature stability is certainly better at helping to prevent sludge formation, but it does not make them immune to it.

When the oil is cold, the oil filter has a bypass valve that opens to prevent the cold oil pressure from blowing out the filter media at elevated engine rpms. During bypass events there is no oil filtering going on, and the oil pump can indeed send big enough particulates dislodged by a solvent through the system to clog an oil passage, and these particles can also clog the pick up tube screen on the oil pump, starving it, and the bearings.

There are a lot of heavily sludged engines in junkyards whose whose vehicles were scrapped not due to engine issues, but other issues. The point being that while sludge is not desirable, it is not an instant death knell either.

KREEN seems to be a well respected motor flush, and products from Liquimoly are also well respected.

My personal aims are to prevent sludge formation in the first place, so I use M1 synthetics and changed them yearly as mine has not racked up high mileages between oil changes in quite some time. I did send in one sample to Blackstone labs after 13 months in the sump, and this analysis showed the oil could have gone longer before the acidic fighting properties of the oil were too low, and the measured insolubles were also well below the dangerous levels.

There is lots of bad information on the net about motor oil, and lots of it will continue until the aged population can get past what they learned 40 years ago and which was applicable to motor oil formulations of the day.

Motor oils of today are so much better, even with the limited ZDDP to prevent premature catalytic converter demise, and this limited ZDDP formulations are only applied to 20 and 30 weight oils. Other extreme pressure, antiwear and friction modifier additives, like Moly, boron and titanium are used to counteract the lessened ZDDp levels anyway.

And ZDDP is a consumable additive. More does not equate to better protection. More means it can protect for longer before being depleted.

But this information will be ignored by the high zinc crowd running flat tappet cams with high spring pressures anyway.

Most all conventional wisdom about motor oils is severely outdated, and not applicable to the formulations of today. But this gets the old timers all irate red faced, indignant and will surely earn me a personal attack.

So be it.

 

I've used Gunk Motor Flush to keep the engine clean inside. Gunk has rebranded their product to the old labeling, but it still has the gunk trademark in the middle of the label in small print.

If you ever had that plenum off, Gunk Motor Flush works really well with very little scrapping if any.