Help Camshaft Casing filled with Baked oil Sledge

Hi Guys,
I really need help. My new to me truck (1998) has been loosing oil since I've owned it approximately it 1 year. I thought that this was due to a valve cover seep that was present when i bought it. Recently I've noticed that I've been losing more oil and i figured it was because the seep had gotten worse so i decided to finally change the valve cover gaskets.

I was in the process of changing my passenger side valve cover gasket and when i open the camshaft casing. I saw that the entire space was filled with baked on sledge not even sludge most of it is hardened to some degree. See pictures attached. It looks like I've found where my oil has been disappearing to.
The drain hole is plugged so once the oil enters there's nowhere for it to go.

Some details

I'm the third owner of this truck and from what i've seen so far she was not well tended before me.
Coolant looked like chocolate milk when i changed it.
I use mobile 1 full synthetic 5W30 with a change interval of ~4000-5000 miles. I don't drive a lot so it's about 6 months between oil changes.

What should my next move be? I know I should clean it but what should i use carb cleaner, gasoline?
How should i unblock the drain hole?
Does this drain just lead back to the pan?
Where else should I look for this sledge build up beside the other camshaft casing?
I really want to save the old girl but let me know if it's not worth it.

Seriously any thoughts or tips would be greatly appreciated.
Ryan

 

Those pictures have me wondering what the oil pan looks like....
You can clean the top cover by soaking it in gas or whatever (carb. cleaner, degreaser, perhaps the cheapest) you'd like its all metal if I'm guessing right. But if your going to clean the engine part some of that crap might get back into the oil pan and system. I've never flushed a oil system so I'm not sure about the process....

Good luck man.

 

Thanks I'm just going to town on the upper cover with brake cleaner. So for the lower casing is one product better than others? I'm worried about more of this crap and whatever cleaner i use going through the values.

 

Yea thats what i would be worried about, stuff falling into the engine. A engine flush could make matters worse if it breaks up some junk and gunk and may further block the oil passages or not break down enough and get some stuck in the oil pumps screen. Maybe someone will chime in thats done a few engines flushes on something this contaminated.

 

if the coolant looks like chocolate milk i would be concerned you may have some sort of other problems. but never the less that does not look good at all. almost looks like you have an oil galley stopped up

 

I've heard of people flushing the engine with break in oil, I believe it's 0W-20. I'd confirm that would actually work with your truck though, I'm going off memory... As mentioned above, I'd be concerned with the amount of crap an engine flush could loosen up and send through your engine.

 

Ryan, I had a Jeep with what looks like the same gunk. The dipstick also had some rust on it. The oil and coolant systems had intermingled somewhere. Turned out to be a broken head gasket. Sometimes this is caused by a cracked block or head, or just head bolts not torqued properly. Very often just the gasket has let go. That is where I'd look first.
Does the other side look the same? Anyway, the gunk is just a symptom of a deeper problem. Any cleaner or solvent runs the risk of breaking stuff loose and blocking other parts of the oil system so I'd be careful here.
Good luck and keep us posted.
-Bill-

 

Bill,
Thankfully I don't think it's a head gasket issue. There are none of the other issues that usually indicate a problem with the head gasket ie over heating, loosing coolant, milky oil, also when I changed the spark plugs 5000 miles ago they showed no indication of head gasket failure. But I guess it's possible if the rupture is subtle or in the early stages.

Right now I don't know what the other camshaft looks like I started replacing the seal on the passenger because it looks like the easier one to replace. I before i opened the casing I was thinking about not changing the seal on the passenger side because it wasn't seeping there.

My plan originally was to clean out the camshaft casings with some kind of solvent brake cleaner, WD 40, carb cleaner and try not to get too much crap into the valves then drain the oil drop the oil pan and clean all the crap out. Then load new oil + filter + engine cleaner run that through repeat the new oil filter engine cleaner 3 times or so. Then open up the engine again look at the camshafts finally change the seals (the job that started this) and see where i'm at if it's looking good. Then finally load oil and a new filter run with that for a month or so and change it again.

Then I realized that in order to drop the oil pan I need to remove the front diff and I want to do that about as much as i want to walk on broken glass. So no dropping the oil pan at least not right away.

How's that sound? I'm worried about the big oil particles getting clogged up elsewhere so hopefully after I remove all the the garbage from the camshafts and use multiple oil flushes replacing the filter each time that will minimize that risk.
Wish me luck.
Ryan

 

If you wish to clean this thing up well, you will be looking at what you expect: A bit of work. With the lack of maintenance from previous owners, you are unfortunately the one who is stuck-like-Chuck. Your idea of a top-down cleaning is a good one. you will need to soak the camshaft area and allow the sludge to break up. The good thing is, from the camshaft area down, it is non-pressurized, and simply drains down into the oil pan. The bad news is that it is not going to be a simple, quick fix. You will need to clean the top camshaft areas on both banks, then what I usually do is use pressurized air, regulated down to about 25 PSI to blow down the drain holes. This helps to make sure all the sludge is in the oil pan. After that, and before you crank that engine up, drain the oil and then run some more cleaner down the drain holes to do the best you can to get everything out of the pan. Short of pulling the pan, that is the only good way to clean it out. Well, short of the pressure washing method, which is quite effective, but takes a decent amount of time. don't laugh, I have pressure washed engines that looked like that, and by the time it was all done, she was nice and clean, and ran just fine.

So after you clean it all out and drain the pan completely, Change out the oil filter, and fill with fresh oil. Run the engine for about 500 miles, and change the oil again. After that you should be a lot cleaner and won't have too much to worry about. Good luck and let us know what you are going to do. I am sure others will run into the same problem, and could benefit from your experience with yours.

 

Kreen can work wonders. I would clean as much as you can by hand then run some
Kreen with conventional 5W30 for maybe 500-1000 miles, change oil and filter, repeat. Keep doing this till the oil looks better. Pretty sad that other owners neglect a awesome engine. Kreen can only be ordered online and some states may not be able get it but it's worth a shot.

 

Thanks for the advice. I still need to do a lot of cleaning i don't even know where the drain holes are.

What solvent/fluid would you soak it with?

I shopped the idea around of using a solvent to clean the baked on oil and neither the toyota dealer or the auto parts store i went to thought that was a good idea.
So for the time being i'm using a pointed stick an air compressor and a tooth brushish tool to clean off the loose chunks.

I'll be taking a lot of pictures to compare the results before and after the flushes/ cleaning so if I've got enough material I'll put it into a how to guide or maybe just some useful tips.

Thanks again,
Off to poke my camshafts with a stick.

 

subd!

good luck

 

Good idea with the brush and air. As for solvent, there are so many over-the-counter solvents you could use. Anything that will help break it up and get it down the drains into the pan really. This will be a hit-and-miss where you may have to consider changing the oil and filter every 500 miles or so for a few oil changes to be safe.

 

I would use SEAFOAM. No I am not saying seafoam is a cure all fix all, but I have seen some vids where an engine looked like yours or worse and they ran seafoam in the engine oil and the results were quite impresive.

I mean hell, you did have doubts if it could be saved, so why the heck not try.

 

Also, my buddy Tim is an ASE mechanic and he works on Fords, the new ones with the crazy spark plugs with the super long electrode that don't get changed for like 50K miles. But once you go and try ang pull them out the carbon has built up so bad they will not come out. Fords answer to this in their TSB to mechanics is to crack the plug loose and poor seafoam into the spark plug and let it sit, the process is repeated till the plug comes out. It really eats carbon, sludge. If they didn't try this the spark plug could and sometimes does snap off and falls into the cylinder, and then you are f'ed.

 

Yeah I always see good things about Sea Foam. The plan for right now after getting back from toyota and picking up a bunch of oil and filters from the auto parts store is to clean all loose sledge and garbage from the cam shaft.

I've for now I've decided not to use a solvent to clean within the casing. Neither toyota nor the auto parts store thought it was a good idea and it will most likely result in a thin version of this sludge making it's way down to the valves.

If I wanted to clean the casings like that they recommend I take them out. Bleh.

So once all the loose garbage is gone i'm going to put it back together. Change my oil filter and run the toyota branded engine oil cleaner. Then change the oil and run a second toyota branded engine oil cleaner through. Once that is done i'm going to open up the casings again and see what i've got.

I change my plan slightly because the people at the the toyota shop were hopeful because apparently this stuff is the $hit (and they've used it in engines that were worse than mine). I'm skeptical so i'm going to do it twice then look again because of the too good to be true aspect. But we'll see.

I'll post pictures of the before and after.
Again wish me luck.
~Ryan

 

Solvents will mess up some rubber gaskets if left on them too long thats probably why they were playing it safe and telling you not to use it. The old acetone to increase gas mileage trick ruins the rubber o-rings on injectors eventually. But I think you will be safe using whatever as long as it does'nt sit on any rubber products for too long. Seafoam is good stuff too like the previous posters said!

 

ATF works pretty good...just make sure you change your oil filter

 

Just out of curiosity, how many kilometers does the engine have on it? What type of oil do you use?