Kinda OT, its been a realllll sludgy week..

[Bill R.]

http://www.bimmernut.com/%7Ebillr/images2/escortsludge1.jpgThis ones a ford escort and its about 2 inches thick in places. Lifters collapsed from oil starvationhttp://www.bimmernut.com/%7Ebillr/images2/escortsludge2.jpgThis

ones a Dodge Ram 318 thats had the oil changed like clockwork every 3500miles with dino oil and its now around 100khttp://www.bimmernut.com/%7Ebillr/images2/dodgesludge1.jpglhttp://www.bimmernut.com/%7Ebillr/images2/dodgesludge2.jpg

[liquidtiger720]

i really hate to see what mine looks like.

[ajt3nc]

Iffy Lube?

[Alexlind123]

i really hate to see what mine looks like.

Just take your valve cover off. 5 minutes and torque wrench. Im sure it will be fine.

[632 Regal]

OMG... this is like revival of the '70s whats up with all this Bill?

[Bill R.]

i've had more cars with sludging than in the last 5 years.



OMG... this is like revival of the '70s whats up with all this Bill?

[winfred]

reminds me of the newer bimmers and volvos (god i hate the s80)

[ajt3nc]

I know toyota ( gasp, they do have issues) and VAG ( vw, audi , etc) have huge sludging issues.
Is it the temps they want to run?
They have both, along with several others, switched to proprietary oils which have much less wax.( Think the new 0-60 bimmer oil).

[632 Regal]

it has to do with the PCV system or something, without a ton of humidity even dino wouldnt produce this crap let alone synthetic that I have personally never seen an example of sludging.

is it possible that at service change they arent using syn? Or something other than pure oil going in there for some reason.

I feel restless after them pics...I was much younger when that was a standard look.

[ajt3nc]

What we found was that most of the iffy lubes were using filtered( recycled oil) or the customer was using Dollar General oil.
A lot of people were avoiding bmw's oil changes because of the cost and that is why oil changes are covered under lease/maintenance now.

[GJPinAU]

OK Bill, your starting to freak us out now. This is your 2nd posting of this **** happening. Is there some way we can check (apart from the obvious) or are there tell-tale signs to look out for?

[Jon K]

http://blowneuroz.com/newmotor/4.jpg

After some 200k miles.

[Zeuk in Oz]

Bill, this sort of sludge looks to be very severe.

Have you ever seen it in an engine that you yourself have serviced regularly with synthetic oil ?

In other words I am wondering if this is the result of stupidity / incompetence or just bad luck / choice of oil ?

When I removed the head from my M20 motor, the head was full of milky oil due to the blown headgasket but there was no evidence of sludge at all. That at 240,000 km (Approx 150,000 miles).

[wingman]

Same with my busted arse E12 2.8 with a million miles on it. Not an ounce of sludge after extreme climates and constant use of Valvoline XLD Plus 10-50 mineral. Surely this is a compounding problem.

[Bill R.]

course i haven't seen any with synthetic that i've serviced from day one though... most sythetic users are second owners with50k or so miles on the car when they start using it.. I think i've posted maybe 4 pics of sludged cars. One was a honda civic that was extremely abused. No oil change at all for at least the first 50k of life. This ford escort head i suspect had a similar sort of abuse, the owner said i'm sure i had the oil changed at least once a year and a half ago. The dodge v8 heads from the late 90's are known to have this problem and this owner was very carefull about doing oil changes and filter changes every 3500k miles. This engine is used in the ram truck and the durango and everybody but dodge seems to realize there's a problem with the redesign of it thats causing sludging at relatively low miles. I used to see this daily back in the 70's when i worked on the early US emission engines before they figured out how to do emission controls. Years like 73 74 75 76 were terrible for this.



Bill, this sort of sludge looks to be very severe.

Have you ever seen it in an engine that you yourself have serviced regularly with synthetic oil ?

In other words I am wondering if this is the result of stupidity / incompetence or just bad luck / choice of oil ?

When I removed the head from my M20 motor, the head was full of milky oil due to the blown headgasket but there was no evidence of sludge at all. That at 240,000 km (Approx 150,000 miles).

[granit_silber]

Bill R., et al....

What causes that type of sludge in the Dodge (as it has been properly maintained)?
After the first 3500 miles my PO switched to 20w50 Castrol GTX and had it changed and the normal service intervals. When I changed my valve cover gasket in november the valvetrain looked like JonK's picture (nice and clean). Now it gets changed every 3000 miles with either Valvoline Maxlife (dino) or GTX High mileage (dino).

-ashley

[joshua43214]

I have seen bad sludging even with synthetic oil on cars that are constantly short triped. People that drive several times a day to places they should walk. The car never warms up enuogh to boil off the condensation and it just build up, turns to milk and then sludge. really ugly.

By far the worst I have ever seen was when I worked on Saabs, this guy brings in a 900base with an engine knock. There is a weird goo on the dipstick. I spin off the filter and it has more goo. I remove the drain plug and nothing comes out. I finaly lower the car, put a pan under the engine, and run compressed air into the crankcase, the "oil" came out like a dog turd and piled up in the pan for a bit before it settled into a pile of goo. I ran 3 changes of used oil and then filled with fresh oil and filter. It had the worst sounding knock I had ever heard on a car that ran.

This BTW was the 900 I mentioned in the "how fast have you driven" thread that I redlined for a while trying to blow it up. Boss finaly took it out and did it the next day.

[Jon K]

when i worked at a saab dealer we had a new 93 come thru because it "wouldnt start". When they asked the guy what had been done recently to the car, he said he changed the oil the day before and it should run great! They pulled the oil drain plug, nothing came out. They pulled the valve cover, the cams were all burnt up... he changed the oil half way... never put the oil in.

[joshua43214]

when i worked at a saab dealer we had a new 93 come thru because it "wouldnt start". When they asked the guy what had been done recently to the car, he said he changed the oil the day before and it should run great! They pulled the oil drain plug, nothing came out. They pulled the valve cover, the cams were all burnt up... he changed the oil half way... never put the oil in.

Oh this spurned me to post again, I saw this happen 3 times on the older 900 auto's. People would go to the fast oil change places and they would drain the differential instead of the crankcase, add 4quarts to the sump and ship the car. The customer would then bring in the car complaining of a sqeaking sound when driving. As a testament to Saab engineering, one of them we just filled the dif up and gave it back until we could schedule him (he lived close and we had a small lot), he called us and said it was fine now and it ran for 2 years until he sold it. Being 4quarts high never seemed to affect the engine either, pretty cool on a 4cylinder, this would blow all the seals out of most engines.

[Russell]

The PO had not maintained the engine as well as I liked. They went by the indicator lights. Hence ever 7-8,000 mile oil/filter changes on non-synthetic oil.

Auto-rx gently cleans your engine over several thousand miles with multilple oil/filter chages. It has removed some junk from my engine with the end result of a slightly smoother and stonger "feeling" engine. Google for the BOBISTHEOILGUY site.

[dacoyote]

The PO had not maintained the engine as well as I liked. They went by the indicator lights. Hence ever 7-8,000 mile oil/filter changes on non-synthetic oil.

Auto-rx gently cleans your engine over several thousand miles with multilple oil/filter chages. It has removed some junk from my engine with the end result of a slightly smoother and stonger "feeling" engine. Google for the BOBISTHEOILGUY site.

I used auto-rx also... not sure if it was needed as the car I did it on wasn't sludged at all...