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KBB has the Xterra at $8,500 for good condition, which it is (except, of course, for the discovery of sludge), not $3,000 like one had mentioned earlier. So while $5,700 for a new engine would make one pause, the $900 or so for the heads, timing belt, water pump, etc. would still make economic...

Originally Posted By: SLCraig Originally Posted By: hattaresguy That sludge is probably from coolant intrusion into the oil. As long as it runs fine with good oil pressure I would just run a good synthetic on shorter changes,say 3k miles. That will clean out most of the sludge very slowly...

Originally Posted By: Hemi426 My condolences regarding your brother. I would scrape as much of the sludge out of the heads as you can. You might try running a load of Pennzoil Ultra 5w-30 in it for a few thousand miles with a few filter changes and top-ups during the OCI. Thank you. Quite...

Originally Posted By: aquariuscsm How well does it run? If it runs fine,I`d just keep on cruising! :^) Maybe do 1500 mile or so oci`s with a good dino and a cheap filter. It's run fine since we've had it. Even with the small gasket leak it had no problems or hint that something was going wrong...

Originally Posted By: The_Eric Originally Posted By: jeepman3071 Might just be the dealership trying to squeeze a few bucks out of you. Or they don't want to be responsible for it after it's back together. They already are backing away from warranting this work (normally 12 and 12K). My...

No. My brother bought it in Florida as a rental return (Enterprise, I believe) in late 2004. It had about 26K miles or so at time. But, unfortunately, he passed away a few months after and I drove it to my Mom's in CA. She gave it to us at about 33K. So there is a sentimental attachment to the...

Newbie question, but what is PP/PU?

That's encouraging news, thanks. Would you recommend Auto-RX as an additional precaution?

I guess I better make an appointment for the oil pan cleaning. Seems insane it will cost >$400, but after checking online it appears a bunch of front-end stuff needs removing to access the oil pan. But cheaper, if it works, than new engine. Thanks.

Thanks. There were no noises or anything to make one think something was amiss. It was just getting Nissan to fix the head that happened to uncover the mess. For a cleaning OCI, what would you recommend miles wise?

Well, I'm currently in for $830 now. I was having them put a new timing belt, water pump and tensioner, as the engine was already apart. I get a feeling that may have been a waste. Nissan did say a "bandaid" would be to have the oil intake screen cleaned. I mention that to my shop and they said...

So I take the photos aren't good? I had Googled engine oil sludge and saw some pics where it looked like a vat of pudding had been dumped in there, so I was hoping perhaps mine wasn't as tragic. But I'm getting the feeling I'm not going to be that lucky.

The leak was a minor one (maybe an inch, if that, a month in overflow container) and the engine never overheated. The problem, though, was it was diagnosed with a leaky head gasket while under warranty, but after a week the dealer said it was a bypass hose instead. But smell persisted for months...

Hi, I have a 2004 Nissan Xterra V6 2WD w/81K miles. Both head gaskets has small external leaks and needed replacing. Once heads were off I got a call from dealer saying the engine had oil sludge and best bet was a new $5,700 motor. I mentioned how a motor with 81K can have sludge, let alone...