A gentle reminder of why regular oil changes are important..

Ick!

On the bright side, no internal rust to be seen......

I dread looking inside my 51 218 flathead 6. Almost 70 years of non-detergent oil and a bypass filter. Not gonna be pretty.

Honestly, id much rather find that then a motor that was drained and sat on a concrete floof for 25 years.

That all will clean up nice.

When I bought my '55 Plymouth, I changed the oil and it came out black and thick. I started it and idled it until it got hot, then I changed it again. I think I changed it about 6 times in the first few months, just to try and get as much gunk as possible out of the engine. The filter housing was hardened sludge up to the drain-back hole. Taking that off and digging what seemed like window putty out with a screwdriver made me feel better about the whole thing. Eventually, I replaced the feed and drain hard lines on the filter housing with braided AN lines so I could empty the filter when I do an oil change.

X2!

You would be surprised how often I see this, and on fairly new cars.

In 1976 my brother bought a new Chevy pickup with a 350. He changed the oil religiously every 3000 miles with Quaker State Delux 10-40. At 42000 miles it spun a rod bearing, the engine in the first post is clean compared to his. The rocker arms were working in sludge. IiRC that oil was a paraffin based.

My aunt had a 69 Olds Cutlass she insisted got Quaker State oil changes ever 6,000 miles. Around 50,000 I had to replace all the rocker stands. The motor was so sledged up, the rockers left an imprint in the crud stuck to the inside of the covers. I had to do the whole deal again at around 70,000. I finally convinced her she needed to quit using Quaker State, and she needed to change her oil at 2,000 miles instead of 6,000 miles. After following my advice, she did get over 100K miles out of that poor Olds before she traded it on something else. Gene

Saw that a lot in the 70s with regular oil changes of quaker state and z7 pennsoil. Oldsmobiles were the worst, cylinder head drains would plug. We used to pour 3 gallons of kerosene in them, run them, and change the oil to valvoline or texaco, never a problem after that.

Kerosene

That sure would LOOSEN IT UP but then it drops into pan THEN blocks the pickup

Had a '72 318 with a spun rod bearing years ago that, when I pulled the intake, I was looking at an impression of the bottom of the intake. It looked like it had a valley pan the way B/RB engines do but it was in fact solid sludge.

I'm not 100% sure but I think the engine still had it's original oil filter on it and this was around '91.........

Ive seen this exact same thing happen to engines even with proper oil changes . The company I used to work at back in the 80s used nothing but Valvoline, And after pulling the valve covers on one truck and I couldn't see the rockers arms,
Ive never used Valvoline since

I never saw that, maybe it was not the oil causing it. All my stuff had valvoline or phillips 66 and looked like new with 3000 mile oil changes. Cold weather state. Who knows?

Never a problem, scrape out what you could, jack the front up on the rack to about a 30 degree angle, let it drain overnight, chunks came out. Never lost a motor, one olds went another 100,000 after that. 318s had an issue with the plate on the bottom of the intake, oil would coke on the intake after the heat riser stuck shut. I saw one so bad that you could not see the cam and the plate and 2 rivets were laying in the motor. Same deal, clean, kerosene and a few oil changes and it never quit till it went to the junkyard.

I remember rebuilding many cylinder heads that came in the shop that looked like they still had a valve cover on them. The mechanic had to dig out a hole to find the head bolt.

I wouldn't doubt that some oils would tend to leave more deposits than some others. But my personal experience is that the vehicle's daily operation is much more of an factor.

For instance, I began my Mopar experience by using the engines from retired police cars. Never have I pulled an ex-squad down that had those kind of deposits. And all of them had a ton of miles. But they had spent nearly all of their operational time at full operating temp.

But I have been into many low mileage engines with that kind of sludge. Most of them were primarily driven around town, running errands, stop and go from home to the store and back without the opportunity to fully warm up.

I have read that when oils are slightly heated and then allowed to cool, that the parafins in them tend to separate out and deposit. While getting the oil up to operating temp and kept that way for a sufficient amount of time, keeps the parafins suspended in the oil.

Modern oils resist that better than earlier oils, but sludging is still possible. And then engine design plays a role too. Think the 2.7 from 20 years ago. In other words, there are a lot of factors beyond simply the brand of oil that plays a role in engine deposits.

And although I haven't done it for 40 years or so, we used to flush engines with kerosene. I was actually taught it in auto mechanics class in high school.

always flushed with kerosene or diesel fuel back in the day on sludgy stuff.
even did it some on known good engines as preventative maintenance.

Makes sense, seems the people that had us change their oil never had a problem, same brand oil all the time. I wonder if using various brands would maybe cause the problem. They used to sell motor flush, but kerosene just flat worked every time.

Over the years I've seen several engines flushed with kerosene and none experienced any issues later.

The engine mentioned in my earlier post was in a daily driver, about a 20-25 mile each way to work. So it had plenty of time to warm up. Until recently I always used Havoline oil and my engines were always clean when taken apart. Like most oils I think it's been reformulated in recent years.

Years ago I flushed out a tractor engine that had anti-freeze mixed in the oil. I ran it for a while, drained it, and it has been running great for years now. As a kid, I bought cheap Saffire motor oil and ran it in a Y block Ford, but that had oiling problems anyways. After that I have been using various weights of Valvoline with no problems at all, and I change oil often.

Ever engine I saw like that years ago either had any pennzoil or Quaker state muti grade oil used in it. They were full of wax. The straight weight quaker didn't seem to do it. And we used to put quart of kerosene in a hot engine and run it at idle for 5 minutes before every oil change. Never had an engine failure. I still have a can of product called motor flush that you ran right before oil change kinda the same thing.

when the "dollar" stores first came to be, [a FEW years ago. ] they had their store brand "re manufactured" oil at about half the cost of name brand stuff on their shelves.
my one cousin didn't have much luck with that stuff.
we gig him every now and then on that experience.
he says bad words when we do......

Re Kerosene:

I often use off the road red dye diesel fuel, its red look, smell, viscosity, and apparent performance is just like the popular "Motor Flush" Product, and costs 1/8 as much.

Thats clean compared to some Ive seen My 440 when i bought it and tore it down you could not see the rockers push rods cam valley etc.That was years ago.Took me like 4 bucks at the .25 cent car wash to get the gunk out.Used probally 6 cans of degreaser.I have seen worse at the shop when I was working also.Rocky

Going to see it alot more with the stop/start nonsense that comes on these new vehicles. That's what causes this issue: not getting up to full temperature and then shutting the poor thing off.

High parrafinic conventional base stock (think Pennzoil and Quaker State, but there were many others) combined with the popularity of 10w-40 which required gobs of viscosity Improvers were sludge manufacturing plants back in the day.

The situation is much better now, but certainly timely oil changes are still very much important!

Had a family friend that bought a used cargo 1985 Dodge Mini van with a 2.2L. It was a sludge maker. I did a few things to clean it up. I put one quart of Road Diesel in and ran till real warm. Crusty crud came out. I then did two oil changes but put a pint of diesel in the oil the first one and did low load diving for 2 miles. The second dump was still very black.

He had heard that a pint of diesel mixed in the gas was the same as Seafoam. Well if some was GOOD, more was BETTER. He pumped 1 gallon of diesel in with 10 gallons of gas. He made it 5 miles, I had to tow him home. Flushed out a bunch of dirty gas out of the gas tank.

Diesel is a very light weight lubricating oil. It does NOT have much cushioning for bearing. It is also a solvent.

back in the day, it was also common to pour in a quart of ATF some time before a scheduled oil change to help the clean out process.

Back in the day ? ... they had engine oil and ATF in the Flintstone mobiles ?

looks like that Magic Shell Chocolate you can put on Ice cream and it gets hard.

Yep, About the same.

What is the wisdom of moparts
on commercial engine oil detergent boosters or flushes ?

https://www.amazon.com/Liqui-Moly-2...Y2tSZWRpcmVjdCZkb05vdExvZ0NsaWNrPXRydWU=

https://www.amazon.com/Bars-Product...gent&qid=1583868154&sr=8-1-fkmr0

https://www.bardahl.com/products/oil-additives/engine-and-automatic-transmission-flushing-oil

Every oil change, for decades, normally "Motor Flush", current driver is at 499K.

https://www.acehardware.com/departm...i4ZS_5zd6oaAk7QEALw_wcB&gclsrc=aw.ds

Anyone remember Rislone ?

Kevin

how could you remember that product if you claim you weren't born then ?
and to answer your question, yes i do.

Years back I did what my old man did on all his cars.Add a quart of kerosene at change and run at idle for like 15 minutes.Then drain install plug pour in another 3 quarts.Drain refill with new oil.The old man had the 55 for like 10 years and it had well over 150K when he sold it.Ran like new.My 47 Plymoutyh and others were all super clean inside and never had engine problems.With new oils its really not needed if changed regular.I do mine evey 3K miles.Oh yeah quaker State I used till I rebuilt 1 440.Changed oil every 2K on it.After 6k miles pulled valve covers and it was getting sludge.Went to Kendall and Valvoline and Castrol.No more problems.RockyI

Been running 10-30 Rotella semi synthetic in the '05 Lesabre, and '97 Lesbre. They seem to be fine. IMGTX and I pulled the intake off the '97 a couple of months ago. I bought the car with 150K on it. I has 170K now in 14 months. No sludge. Not sure what the original owner had in it. Little old man had it from new. The counter balance shaft and the inside of the block look like a rust brown (iron block) when we pulled the intake to reseal it. I had a '93 Corolla that the original owner changed the oil every 2-3K and left one quart out and put in Duralube in it's place. I bought it at 142K switched to Rotella @240K I pulled the valve cover off for a new cam seal. The inside of the head looked brand new. I drove it another 20K and totaled it into a guy doing a U-turn on the interstate. My '05 I bought at 89K. It has 198K on it now. Neither one use oil. The Toyota didn't either.

My '72 Duster had 27K original miles on the 198 slant. Quaker State decal on the door jam. DragnMopars and I pulled the motor and there was the waxy goo in the bottom of the pan with the extra ingredient of tetraethyl lead in it. I was running 15-40 Valvoline diesel dinosaur oil in it. I'll switch to the Rotella eventually when it gets back on the road.

Have used this in the past. https://www.bardahl.com/

Yes, I have seen this with core engines that had Pennzoil put in them. Nasty crud galore!