97 Camry With Heavy Sludge

[Merryfrankster]

It's a 5S-FE with 131,000 miles. It's very scary to look under the valve cover. It's a wonder the engine can even run with such heavy deposits - they are everywhere. The rocker arms look like they have been dipped in molasses. The stuff has consistencies ranging from gooey to hard rock-like. Recently did timing belt service and replaced the front seals (crankshaft, camshaft, oil pump and cover o-ring). Also replaced the valve cover gasket. No oil leakages at the present time. However I'm very concerned about the sludge. Is there any consensus on the best way to address this problem? I would not dare to do anything to dislodge all the accumulated deposits - they would certainly plug up the oil galleys. I'm hoping for some magical method to make the stuff melt away. Any ideas? Please, do not suggest that I take the engine apart and soak all the pieces in kerosene. Ain't gonna happen.

[71Corolla]

Fill the engine with 20 gallons of paint thinner, and let it sit for about 2 years.

Honestly, your only hope is to slowly dissolve the crud. A high mileage engine oil will work (very slowly) as well as Seafoam combined with frequent oil and filter changes. Some people swear by Auto-RX. I have personally never used it, there is also MMO (magic mystery oil) which I have also never used.

The key is to slowly have the junk washed away. It can take literally years, but eventually most of it will flush away.

edit - it's Marvel Mystery Oil not magic haha.

[fenixus]

if you have no oil leaks then it should be fairly safe to switch it to 5W-30 or 10W-30 full synthetic oil like Mobil1 FS or Valvoline SynPower (this oil has a funny green color). driving on it with shortened intervals (2.5k miles tops) could wash it away within a year or two, then you could do auto-rx or sea foam for peace of mind

alternatively you could use Castrol GTX (it has a good detergent cleaning package, i think best among dino) but you would need to follow really strict OCI, like 1k-1.5k miles tops.

I wouldn't dare using sea foam or auto-rx now. run it on synthetics for a few months, then re-check the valve cover and decide whether it's safe for the treatment or not yet.

stick to best filters out there Mobil1/WIX/OEM/Denso/Pureone, anything else will be a risk. I would even swap the filters half way through the shortened OCI to be on safe side (top up 0.2qts oil after swapping the filter only).

what OCI and oils/filters have you been using ? do you have pics of sludge in your valve cover ?

[fenixus]

BTW, you can get cheap OEM filters (10-pak) from dealer at $39.99, $4.99 s/h:
http://www.trademotion.com/partlocat...?siteid=215498

[BamZipPow]

Auto-RX is the only way to go. If yer brave, you could carefully scrape the crud off making sure none of it drops into the engine...use a shop-vac to suck it up as yer scraping it off though.

[carsrus]

The simplest and least riskiest way is to run full synthetic.

5w30 and a good filter, Napa Gold or Wix would be the best. Run that along with whatever synthetic oil you prefer and change every 3k for a long, long time.

I wouldent get a filter more expensive then the Wix which is about 6$. Your not going to be running the oil long enough to justify getting anything better.

I personally think auto rx is bs. Ive never seen it work. Sea Foam is way to agressive at this point.

[hill8570]

There are a few options, depending on how aggressive you want to be.

First, don't panic -- your engine is running and isn't burning oil, right? So the sludge isn't doing major harm. Let's keep it that way. The big, big danger with a heavily sludged engine is to use aggressive solvents / motor flushes to clean things up "fast" -- you'll get the crusty chunks breaking loose and clogging up your oil pump pickup screen. Game over. The only safe way to get away with this is to wire in a real oil pressure gauge and monitor it religiously...the oil pressure idiot light has such a low threshold, that it's basically only good for telling you that "you're screwed". I don't recommend this approach at all.

Clean up or replace the PCV valve and the two breather hoses -- the PCV valve is probably completely clogged, and the hoses might be.

A pretty low-risk, high-payoff strategy would be to switch to a good high-detergent dino oil (such as Castrol GTX) and keep the OCI under 3000 miles. I've seen 5S-FEs run with GTX all their lives, and they're clean enough to eat off of. It will also slowly clean up the crap you do have.

A somewhat more aggressive option would be to take a shopvac (with a set of tiny pickups...Home Depot sells a nice set) and a plastic scraper, and clean up as much crust as possible in the area under the valve cover (be sure to plug any oil passages with rags before starting -- you want minimal junk getting away from you). Soak the valve cover overnight in a big bucket of paint thinner and flush it out with a pressure washer to clean out the breather passages to the PCV valve.

If you want to get even more aggressive, drop the oil pan and clean that out. While in there, check the oil pump pickup screen, and change it out if it's looking pretty gunked.

Since you've changed out most of the seals, long-term you might want to switch to a synthetic -- they're way less prone to sludging. However, most are very low in detergents, so they won't do that great of a job cleaning up what you currently have.

[ghettosled]

did it look worse than what was lurking in my motor:

i have sludge buildup with pictures - what to do? (56k iffy?)

that was at 114k miles and im not at about 176k and still running strong. you can read what i did there, but since then ive been only changing the oil every 3,500 - 4k miles. *knocks on wood*

[73sport]

Adding to above:

How much is it driven monthly and what type of driving does it get?

If the answer is daily short runs a 3000mile interval is way to long. Cut it in 1/2 or even a 1000miles. Long runs at sustained temperatures will help it the most. Think road trip. . .

As stated above, its like a people; break a clot free plugging something and it'll kill it!
Be very careful if you chunk it away and plug the return holes as suggested by Hill, as you don't want any clots in a return hole or pickup screen. The more aggressive you get with cleaning the quicker the filter should be replaced. There is no law against replacing the filter twice in a 2000 mile oil change OR use a big filter like this for a while:

NAPA WIX Part Number: 51515
Principal Application: Ford Family of Cars/Trucks (57-00), Toyota Landcruiser (71-96). I use this if I know I broke chunks loose and then return to normal filter size on next OC interval.

The last thing you want is a smaller filter to run in by-pass mode because it plugged. So use a larger filter or change it more often.

[73sport]

Does anyone have some real data supporting synthetics having better cleaning oxidents than dyno?

I think you'd get more bang per buck doing 1000 mile intervals on dyno fluid than running expensive sythetic 3000miles. Your goal is to get it out and cheap filters typically don't filter in the 100micron or less catagory.

WIX
Part Number: 51515

Style: Spin-On Lube Filter
Service: Lube
Type: Full Flow
Media: Paper

Height: 5.178
Outer Diameter: 3.660
Thread Size: 3/4-16
By-Pass Valve Setting-PSI: 8-11
Anti-Drain Back Valve: Yes
Beta Ratio: 2/20=19/41
Burst Pressure-PSI: 270
Max Flow Rate: 7-9 GPM

Nominal Micro Rating: 19

Gasket Diameter
O.D. I.D. Thk.
2.834 2.462 0.20

[71Corolla]

Originally Posted by 73sport

Does anyone have some real data supporting synthetics having better cleaning oxidents than dyno?

Good question. For engine cleaning Castrol GTX seems like about the best out there, but some people swear by using a full synthetic to flush away the crud. I personally would just use Castrol GTX with an extremely short change cycle, 1000 miles, along with using something like the WIX filter.

[Merryfrankster]

Originally Posted by ghettosled

did it look worse than what was lurking in my motor:

i have sludge buildup with pictures - what to do? (56k iffy?)

that was at 114k miles and im not at about 176k and still running strong. you can read what i did there, but since then ive been only changing the oil every 3,500 - 4k miles. *knocks on wood*

Ghettosled, mine looks almost exactly like yours looked before you fixed it.

Your thread has so many replies in it that I could not tell exactly what you did. Would you mind repeating your procedure here?

Thanks, Frank.

[Merryfrankster]

Originally Posted by 71Corolla

Good question. For engine cleaning Castrol GTX seems like about the best out there, but some people swear by using a full synthetic to flush away the crud. I personally would just use Castrol GTX with an extremely short change cycle, 1000 miles, along with using something like the WIX filter.

I did switch to Castrol GTX 10W40 on all my Camry's (I have four) about six months ago, and something very interesting started to happen: The oil pump cover O-rings all started to go, one by one, within a few weeks of one another. I believe this is too much of a coincidence to be attributed to chance alone. One possible explanation is that the detergent content of this oil is too aggressive for old rubber parts. Any opinions?

PS. Since switching to Castrol GTX my OCI has been about 1,500 to 2,000 miles. I've also replaced the PCV valves and valve cover vacuum hoses on all four engines.

[71Corolla]

Originally Posted by Merryfrankster

I did switch to Castrol GTX 10W40 on all my Camry's (I have four) about six months ago, and something very interesting started to happen: The oil pump cover O-rings all started to go, one by one, within a few weeks of one another.

Interesting. Those gaskets are a weak spot though, they dry up and fail all the time. But I would not rule out the possibility of the Castrol speeding up the process. I personally run only 100% synthetic in all my cars and have done so for years. The engines stay spotless, and I have never had any leaking or seal failure problems.

[hill8570]

Originally Posted by Merryfrankster

I did switch to Castrol GTX 10W40 on all my Camry's (I have four) about six months ago, and something very interesting started to happen: The oil pump cover O-rings all started to go, one by one, within a few weeks of one another. I believe this is too much of a coincidence to be attributed to chance alone. One possible explanation is that the detergent content of this oil is too aggressive for old rubber parts. Any opinions?

PS. Since switching to Castrol GTX my OCI has been about 1,500 to 2,000 miles. I've also replaced the PCV valves and valve cover vacuum hoses on all four engines.

You'll see the same thing when switching to synth -- the oil seals on the front of the engine (camshaft / crankshaft / oil pump shaft seal / oil pump o-ring) will start to weep. Usually the dizzy o-ring, too. AFAIK, it's due to the sludge and dirt getting cleaned off of the seals, and the seals being too hard to seal on their own anymore. For sure, when you pry one of those seals out, they're brittle as glass.