Is this normal?

How often did you change the oil?

Theres oil in it!

No...how-often-did-you-change-the-OIL?

John Welsh said:

Is there metal in the sludge or just sludge? 

Just sludge. Popped a couple rod caps (before I thought to question wether or not they were TTY) and they look like they don't belong in this mechanical cesspool. (AKA almost no wear) But I can find comfort in knowing I didn't check them all. 

I'm going LEEROY JENKINS and just retorquing them unless someone has good reason for me to care about not caring. 

In reply to obsolete:

Yes/no? Depends on how accurate you want to be. LOL

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Mr_Asa said:

03Panther said:

Back in the 70’s, as I was learnin’ car stuff, my grandfather had been a life long Quaker State follower. My friends that swore by penzoil. Said Q. S. Would build sludge because it was parifin based, and penzoil didn’t ‘caus it wasn’t. ‘Course they also swore setting a car battery on concrete would ruin it, so...

Setting a battery on concrete did used to ruin it.  They used to have a kind of tar/hardened rubber coating for the exterior case.  As they aged they'd get little micro-fractures in them, then the cold of the concrete would cause them to sweat and that could cause enough condensation to complete a circuit and slowly discharge.  Modern batteries use plastic and you could store them in water if so long as you don't reach the terminals

That is correct. Except you forgot to mention that very few people still alive, are old enough to have been around for the change. But, it is now a wives tale still repeated. Kinda my point. 

Streetwiseguy said:

Pretty normal for a car maintained religiously, but a few months and 10,000 miles past the recommended interval every time, while using the very finest  cheapest oil from Walmart.

 

the cheap oil from walmart is not bad at all. The cheap dollar store oil on the other hand.....

In reply to NOT A TA :

That's what the engine in my truck looked like when I changed the valve cover gaskets (350 chevy), i was scared to pull the intake manifold.  Strangely enough the oil would drain out just fine, that was 10 years ago and that engine's still running..

Just to put the rumor to rest about paraffin-base oil.  Lubricating oil bases fall in the C20 range.  For reference, gasoline falls in the C6-C10 range.  Paraffin falls into the C70 range.  You would be surprised at how many lube companies all use the exact same base from Quaker State, which sources heavy hydrocarbons from ExxonMobil.  The Quaker State refinery that used to be in Emlenton had a never ending line of Pennzoil, Castrol, Valvoline, and Havoline trucks lined up to get the base stock.

The base stock is pretty much the same.  It's what each individual company does with it - further cracking, additives, filtration, etc - that makes the oils different.

But to say that Pennzoil uses more paraffins (a hydrocarbon chain that is 50 steps away in the cracking process) is just not really possible.  I suppose it's possible that they ADD paraffins, but that would reek havoc on it's viscosity stability.  It would go from super thick honey to watery and thin very quickly.

I bought 2 cases of brake cleaner and enough Walmart oil and filters to do half a dozen oil changes over the next few days/weeks. I'm resistantant to using any kind of flush as I had that go bad with a 350 that looked like the 302 someone posted a while ago. (Loosened up too much, clogged the pickup, lost oil pressure and spun a bearing before I could get off the road.)

If it makes it long enough to use all the oil I bought I'll switch it over to Mobil-1 and hope for a slower clean out. 

ETA: if I have any extra ATF kicking around I might use it for the .7 on the first fill, which will get changed back out by the end of the day.

Personally, I'd pull the valve covers and maybe the intake.  Physically remove as much junk as you can before doing anything to clean it out.  That'll make it easier to clean out and reduce the risk of clogging the pickup or anything. 

rslifkin said:

Personally, I'd pull the valve covers and maybe the intake.  Physically remove as much junk as you can before doing anything to clean it out.  That'll make it easier to clean out and reduce the risk of clogging the pickup or anything. 

I'm actually pretty salty about the condition of this @170k as this engine was ultimately slated to go into Sheila, my 97 k2500. 

Mrs Crackers and I are in agreement, if it needs more than the oil pan cleaned out I'm going to ghostride it off a bridge. 

Ok, not really, but in this shape it's not going into Sheila without a rebuild, which completely negates my original plan. 

ETA: I'm looking really hard at the 280zx right now though.

In reply to 759NRNG (Forum Partidario) :

The randomness and fragmented nature of my responses to this thread are truly representative of my life at the present time. 

Does this mean you're back from Alabama?

Also... To the powers that be, I've been a forum supporter for close to a year and still no tag? Emails match etc and I have the same user name on Patreon.

03Panther said:very few people still alive, are old enough to have been around for the change. 

This sentence may also apply to the OP's engine's last oil change...

Pete. (l33t FS) said:

03Panther said:very few people still alive, are old enough to have been around for the change. 

This sentence may also apply to the OP's engine's last oil change...

I once had a customer come in with a year and a half old 30,000 mile ,Firebird with a rod knock.  It had the factory black painted oil filter on it and what oil was in it came out very slowly in a gelatinous blobby trickle.  When the service writer asked the young woman who owned it when she had last changed the oil she replied "what's change the oil?"

The worst I've seen to date was a 2002 Elantra. Had the original oil and filter with 60k+ miles. Engine siezed. Checked the oil, it was dry on the stick. Pulled the pan to find jelly. Pulled the cam cover to find a perfect underside imprint in sludge. Cust was mad it wasn't under warranty. 

BIL was a mechanic and swore that every time he worked on a engine that was crusty inside, there was a Quaker State oil change sticker on the door jam.

In reply to CJ (FS) :

probably because the cheapest Oil change places used it and people that go to the cheapest oil change place don't usually put much effort in making sure their maintenance is up to date or correct.

Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) said:

Just to put the rumor to rest about paraffin-base oil.  Lubricating oil bases fall in the C20 range.  For reference, gasoline falls in the C6-C10 range.  Paraffin falls into the C70 range.  You would be surprised at how many lube companies all use the exact same base from Quaker State, which sources heavy hydrocarbons from ExxonMobil.  The Quaker State refinery that used to be in Emlenton had a never ending line of Pennzoil, Castrol, Valvoline, and Havoline trucks lined up to get the base stock.

The base stock is pretty much the same.  It's what each individual company does with it - further cracking, additives, filtration, etc - that makes the oils different.

But to say that Pennzoil uses more paraffins (a hydrocarbon chain that is 50 steps away in the cracking process) is just not really possible.  I suppose it's possible that they ADD paraffins, but that would reek havoc on it's viscosity stability.  It would go from super thick honey to watery and thin very quickly.

The way it was relayed to me is that way back when everybody's oil had paraffin because it was easier/cheaper to leave in than to take it out.  Statistically, more cars with had the problem with Pennzoil because, statistically, way back when this was an issue, Pennzoil had significantly more market share than any other brand.  After a while people figured out that pulling out the paraffin and selling it to make-up manufacturers was more profitable than leaving it in the engine oil, and everybody switched to taking the paraffin out.  The legacy/memory remained that Pennzoil had a lot of paraffin in the same manner as putting a battery on concrete.  The above story was basically the Pennzoil party line when I heard it 25 years ago, and they are obviously a biased source, but the story does seem to fit the data.

In reply to matthewmcl (Forum Supporter) :

I just don't understand the process by which carbon chains in the low 20s could possibly contain paraffins in the C70 range.  How bad is your hydrogen cracking furnace that you can't isolate the hundreds of compounds between oil and wax?  

What I'm saying is... if the reason is that it was too difficult to take out the paraffin, that means it was difficult to take out all the other stuff in between C20 and C70.  It's not like "oh well, we have oil with a little paraffin in it," it means "we have a little bit of motor oil mixed in with our asphalt."  I would understand if paraffin was C25 and the next thing in the chain, but it's way up there.  That's not really a thing.  They would have actively had to add it on purpose which I also can't understand.

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

in all fairness, oil from the 1930's is a completely different animal from the last 30 years. I mean, most flathead V8's didn't even run an oil filter until later in the production run. 

In reply to Curtis73 (Forum Supporter) :

In the early cracking methods, asphalt, paraffin, and lubricating oil are all drawn out of the atmospheric distillation unit together as reduced crude (I believe) and then cracked separately in the vacuum distillation unit. At this point, yes, you have some motor oil in your asphalt. At some point in the timeline of every technological process, people were still learning. How homogeneous is the temperature control? How good is the vacuum?  Sure, there is a 150°F to 200°F difference in boiling point between paraffin and things around SAE 30, but that is at RTP. I do not know how they shift in relation to each other when under vacuum (how these would have been separated from each other), nor do I know the vapor pressure of the paraffin under the process conditions. Is it too far of a stretch to say that some paraffin was drawn into the lubricating oil in the same way water is still drawn in when condensing alcohol? When the paraffin and lubricating oil are being separated from each other, they are next to each other in terms of boiling/condensing point, which is the characteristic that mattered when thermally cracking.

Edit: I suppose I should feel bad about derailing the thread, but wrestling in the mud is fun...

Since we are enjoying arguments, I will say that almost every example of sludging I've ever seen has been on cars imported into Canada from the USA.

Does this mean that Canadians are better at looking after their stuff?  Maybe, or maybe we just have rather potent reminders of seasonal changes up here, so almost everyone changes their oil at least once a year.  I've never done a north/south USA study, maybe Minnesotans and Dakotans are good like Canuckians with the maintenance.

If nothing else, we can have a nicely bigoted discussion about how Us is better than Them.

In reply to Streetwiseguy :

It's because it doesnt get hot enough up there to cause sludging. 

I don't need an "oil geek-out" conversation but it's good to know that this is where to go if I need one.  

Crackers said:

In reply to 759NRNG (Forum Partidario) :

The randomness and fragmented nature of my responses to this thread are truly representative of my life at the present time. 

Does this mean you're back from Alabama?

Returned to Texas on the 31st of March last year....glad things are going well.......need to met up and trade stories