I recently purchased a 97 T100 4WD. I brought it to my mechanic and asked him to look it over. He recommended that the valve cover gaskets be replaced as oil has been leaking from the rear for some time.
I tackled this two weeks ago and everything went well (except for those darn spark plug gaskets...what a pain). While the covers were off I noticed a thick built up of old oil. I realized that the original owner did not change the oil as recommended by Toyota. So, I spoke with my mechanic again and he did not recommend additaves that are put in with new oil. I did tell him about the Amsoil Engine Flush that I read about. He said it was worth a try since this was put in 20 minutes before you change the oil.
Well, I tried a bottle of the Amsoil on my last oil change and followed the Amsoil directions on the bottle (pour in and crank the engine and let it idle for 20 minutes). Then drain the oil while the engine is hot. Wow, did the oil pour out of it!!!
I intend on doing this 3-4 more times in 1,000 mile increments and then check the inside of the passenger side (easy side) valve cover to see if the gunk has been removed.
I use Seafoam to do this, but I run the engine for about half an hour before doing the oil change (Usually head out to the blue store, pour it into the crank at the parking lot, drive home and into the garage, drain oil, etc, then bam! I'm done). It works everytime like a charm and the first time I did it the engine idled better than it was before. I'm about to do the valve cover gasket myself and wanted to ask you, did you have to buy the intake manifold gasket? Or even better did you have to remove the intake manifold? or is there a way to remove the covers without removing the manifold?
Unfortunatley there is no way to get to the driver's side valve cover without removing the entire (upper and lower) air intake pleum. It's really no big deal to do this. I was going to replace the metal gaskets, but mine looked in good condition and reused the old ones.
When you get to the driver's side you will have some problems getting the cover off as the fuel injector harness is in the way. I had to disconnect the injectors (do not remove them or the fuel rail) so that the cover would slide under the harness. This was the worst part of the whole thing.
A trick that I used was to put a liquid gasket promoter on the gasket before I put it on the cover. All it did was help to hold the gasket in place while you put it back on the engine (this really helped). I saw it as I check out at Discount Auto Parts and bought it for a buck.
Bam, thanks for the info on Auto RX. I am looking for any way to get rid of the sludge.
On my 1998 T100 (acquired at 307k...former work truck), I've already gone through one cleaning phase, currently in the first rinse phase. Cut the filter open and it was pretty dark...didn't strip it down and pull the material out so I'm not sure how much grit was in there. Looking through the oil fill port there was some grit in there originally. I scraped what I could out at first. During the rinse phase...the oil has darkened a lot from the original gold color to more like a cola color. I'll be replacing the oil filter around 500 miles into the cleaning phase. I'll be interested to see what's stuck on the filter at that stage.
I bought 8 bottles of Auto-RX and have already gone through 2 bottles...one fer the engine and the other fer the power steering and transmission. I've already drained the transmission through the cooler lines and refilled with new ATF. I used about 12 quarts of ATF before the lines ran with clean fluid. After taking it fer a quick spin and checking the level...it was about a quart high. So that got drained out...and it came out a little dirty from the torque converter fluid. I'll go through another purge next time.
I think I'll end up going through about 3 cleaning phases with this engine. I think it will be worth it in the long run...
Just did an oil change this morning...oil was pretty dark. I'll be tearing into the used filter tomorrow. Just put in another bottle of Auto-RX fer the 2nd cleaning. Had to order some more Auto-RX today since people have been buying my stock from me. Makes it kinda hard to git stuff cleaned when yer reserve is gitting depleted...
I'm really curious what's in the filter since the first one...
On my 2nd cleaning...oil is starting to git darker now. Got about 500 miles to go before I change the oil and go into the 2nd rinse phase. This last road trip helped out a lot. Gas mileage is up...but I attribute that to my cool air intake stock modification.
Gentle cleaning vs harsh cleaning. Didn't need all of the build up to come off all at once...removing the carbon build up over the course of 3000 miles seemed more logical than in a 5 min flush to break everything loose. Not sure about using ATF or diesel to clean out the engine...Auto-RX is said to gently clean the build up off.
Being that this was a former work truck and peeking into the valve cover I saw a pretty good build up of carbon on the top side...didn't feel like tearing the valve covers off just to see what the true condition was.
Being cheap isn't always the best method...would you jump out of an airplane with parachute that only cost you $1 on the sale rack that said "Previous owner bought but never opened".
I'm not influenced by the other members/owners/users. I know I didn't want to remove all the stuff at once unless I was doing a complete teardown...which I wasn't. I needed to still use my truck and needed a less expensive way than a complete teardown. Of all the options that were out there, Auto-RX seemed like the logical choice so I'm giving it a try.
It's already worked fer the power steering rack leak on the 1998 T-100...I've tried the "other" stuff on my 1993 T-100 and they didn't do anything but take my money. Fer the small amount of Auto-RX that I used...that's a bargain compared to buying a new rack and having that installed. It was a small gamble that it was/wasn't gonna work...but I wanted to see if it would do it...and it did.
I came from an old school when it comes to flushing engine. I had been using diesel fuel for more than 20 years to flush all my gas engine. Every oil change, i put in 5 quarts of diesel fuel to the oil compartment, run the engine for 3 mins, shut it down, complete drain before refill it with newly fresh oil. My engine oil is still clean after 5000 miles interval.
I often use kerosine fuel from an old service station to flush engine as well. But these days, i can not get kerosine for a cheap price. With diesel $2.5/gal, i can afford to flush my engine at every oil change.
I came from an old school when it comes to flushing engine. I had been using diesel fuel for more than 20 years to flush all my gas engine. Every oil change, i put in 5 quarts of diesel fuel to the oil compartment, run the engine for 3 mins, shut it down, complete drain before refill it with newly fresh oil. My engine oil is still clean after 5000 miles interval.
I often use kerosine fuel from an old service station to flush engine as well. But these days, i can not get kerosine for a cheap price. With diesel $2.5/gal, i can afford to flush my engine at every oil change.
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Discussion forum for the short-lived but extremely popular Toyota T-100 model.
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