Engine oil sludge

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Jwilliam98

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I finally got around to the oil for my van and found that the filter haven't been changed since June of 2012 at 86,000 miles and now it's at 136,000 I put some cheap oil in it and plan on changing it later this week and puting some more cheap stuff in for a couple thousand miles and then use some decent oil. My question is how bad would the sludge be on the top side of the engine? The oil filter that I took off was a basic Fram filter and the center of it was filled all the way to where it screws onto the engine with sludge. Thanks
 
I dont follow the logic of putting cheap oil in the engine. You want a good oil that has detergent properties to hopefully clean the engine. I would leave the oil and filter for 1,000 miles than new oil and filter for 3,000 miles. You can remove the valve covers to check the buildup but whats the point your not going to be able to do anything about it. You can try Seafoam but if your not having any unusual noises you may want to take the slow approach to cleaning it by more frequent oil changes.
 
I agree, Do not disturb that sludge too much, Years ago I serviced well tried to service a Newer Acura the lady drove it from new to 75K never changing the oil.

I didn't know this until I pulled the drain plug. The oil literally did not drain from the pan!!


I put the plug back in and sent her packing until she could afford to have the engine completely stripped down and sent off to the machine shop.

If your stuck with this engine and vehicle, do like melsg5 suggest and use good quality oil. and change it often. if you do not have a mechanical oil pressure gauge install one.

and cross you fingers.

Good luck.
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By cheap oil I mean valvoline. I use royal purple in all of my other vehicles and didn't want to put that in this one yet. It isn't making any noises or anything I was just kind of concerned about it but I did put asome seafoam in the crankcase when I changed the oil.
 
I dont consider Valvoline cheap oil either as long as you are using the type for high mileage vehicles and the correct viscosity. So since you have the Seafoam in already dont leave it in too long based on their instructions.
•Add 1 OUNCE to 1.5 OUNCES of Sea Foam Motor Treatment per oil quart for all 4-cycle gasoline and diesel engines.
•When ready, remove OIL FILLER CAP and pour the recommended amount of Sea Foam Motor Treatment directly into the engine crankcase. Do not exceed one treatment per oil change interval.
•Though Sea Foam can be added at any time between oil change intervals, we recommend adding Sea Foam to oil crankcases 100 to 300 drive miles before changing oil and filter.
•When checking dipstick, always change oil that goes from clear to dark.
 
I do agree that it's not cheap, but it's about 20 bucks less per oil change. We've put about 150 miles on it with the sea foam so I'll probably change it Friday. Thanks for the help.
 
I changed the oil again last night and the oil and filter looked like it did the first time i changed it, but with more chunks of sludge coming out of the oil pan. the filter looked the same as before, the center was filled with sludge. after I let it drain for about a half hour i poured two quarts of oil into the engine to get some more stuff out of the pan and more chunks of sludge came out. new oil filter and some more Valvoline and sea foam and ill change it in about another week to see the results.
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The thing to be worried about is the oil pressure, with the amount of sludge you have in this engine, I would recommend a new factory oil sending unit. and a secondary aftermarket gauge to keep a eye on.

The oil pan and pick up tube is bound to be loaded with debris and will starve the engine of oil.

You may want to consider taking the engine out and apart sending it off to a machine shop to basically be cleaned and resealed. rebuilt if necessary.

eventually with enough new clean oil in your engine the now loose debris will clog up your oil pick up tube trashing your engine if it isn't already trashed.

If you do not want to do this you could add a bypass oil filter like found at Amsoil or other aftermarket companies. However I personally think unless some major work is done the engine is running on borrowed time.

https://www.amsoil.com/shop/by-prod...versal-single-remote-bypass-system/?zo=392704

A remote mount dual filter system will do the same thing the added filters may help some yet any debris in the oil pan that is too large to pass through the screen in the pick up will just clog up the pick up starving the engine of oil. I am not sure you have room under the hood for bypass filters.

In the old days where engine sludge was common, we would remove all the engine covers, valve cover timing cover oil pan. oil pick up tube and clean everything.

We would then use a shop vac and a screw driver wire brushes etc to vacuum out all the debris we could get to. along with this we used compressed air to blow out the nooks and crannies that the shop vac wasn't powerful enough suck out.

We also replaced the push rods and lifters, PCV valve and hose. Back then sometimes we also had to rebuild the carburetor to clear the vacuum ports
and on occasion clean the nipples and ports on the intake manifold.

Once we were confident that we had the majority of the sludge out out we would run the engine with fresh oil and filter for 30 minutes keeping a close eye on the oil pressure. then dump the oil and filter, through a screen to see how much debris was still present in the oil.

We repeated this process until no debris was noticeable in the screen we filtered the oil through.

We asked the the customer to return in 500 mile intervals for oil changes until the engine oil appeared normal.

It is also important to make sure the engine is running at peak performance and running long enough.

If the same condition that created the sludge exist it will return. meaning a rich running engine, a cold running engine ( t-stat stuck open ) short run times. ETC

A engine doesn't have to suffer infrequent oil changes to form sludge.

However it is clear from your original post that the oil changes were neglected on your engine.

Good luck with whatever you do.
 
Thanks that's kind of what I'm planning on doing iv changed the oil and filter 3 times now and after the second time I dropped the pain and cleaned it and the oil pick up and sprayed a all I could with brake cleaner. At the same time I took off the front valve cover gasket and sucked all I could out of it which surprising wasn't that much and sprayed it down with some more brake cleaner. I then put a new pcv valve in and put the whole thing back together and ran some more oil with a new filter. The last time I changed it it was fairly clean, but I'm going to do an oil change every 500 miles until I'm satisfied with the results. When that time comes I'll see if I can replace the oil pump and pickup, a new oil pressure sensor and an after market on that I'll mount under the hood and check it fairly often to see how it's doing. Thanks for the help yall are giving me with this.
 
No problem, I just hope it helps.

When I met my wife around the year 2000 she had a fairly new 1998 Dodge Ram 1500 with a 318.

I checked the oil to find nothing but what looked like dried coffee grounds the whole length of the dip stick. Same thing with the filter it had a 1998 date on it from the first 3K service. ( back then she had 57,000 miles on it!! )

after what seemed like forever cleaning, and flushing I finally got the oil to look normal with decent oil pressure but she had already wrecked the valve seals, guides, lifters and rings.

It consumed more oil than gas it seemed which says a lot since that truck sucked up some fuel.

The worst part was I found in the glove box a maintenance contract for free maintenance and oil changes until 50K and a extended warranty she paid for in the glove box that she never used.

The only reason I found the contracts is because I was in the process of replacing the evaporator dryer and compressor when I noticed the oil change and maintenance book in the glove box when I was emptying it out to finish pulling out the dash and evaporator case.

So instead of paying for the parts to fix my wife's truck on my own time I got paid through the shop I was working at to fix it.

I could have got the engine replaced through the extended warranty but I could never live with myself knowing my wife never changed the oil causing the problem.

I think around 2001 or 2002 I traded it for a 1972 Chevelle with no engine or transmission, I still think I got the better deal.

Just looking at that truck pissed me off knowing all of what was wrong could have been avoided and all the work I had done to it didn't have to be done at my expense.

Lesson learned there was, if anyone has a new wife with a newer vehicle check the glove box for the purchase agreement and service contracts before you waste time and money fixing something that could be done for you with a minor deductible.
 
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