Under the valve cover 2000 Miata

[jdma70]

Recently purchased this 2000 Miata, and I am in the process of performing maintenance. It's the usual timing belt, seals, water pump, etc. The engine has 161K miles on it and is the original so far as I can tell. I am the third owners and as far as I can tell for the history of this vehicle's oil changes, it was dealer bulk oil from new until 89k miles, from then on out the previous owner used supertech oil and filters. I recently changed the oil and filled it with Rotella T6 and a Purolator classic, so we'll see how that works out when I get a UOA done next change.







From what I can see other than the varnish, everything looks clean.

 

[Bottom_Feeder]

Very nice. I'd love to get a Miata someday but I don't think I would ever be comfortable in one. They seem like a blast to drive and fun to tinker with.

 

[wemay]

Agreed. Some varnish but you're not using the engine as a dinner plate. Enjoy the purchase.

 

[Brybo86]

Rust on the cam lobes?

What it that brown stuff?

 

[Nick1994]

Holy mother of varnish!

The varnish is doing no harm, below is what I would do if it were my car:

Do 2 - 3,000 mile OCIs with Pennzoil Yellow Bottle

Not use a Tearolator I mean Purolator oil filter

After those oil changes switch to Pennzoil Platinum for 5,000-7,500 mile oil changes.

But who asked me? Lol

 

[barkingspider]

Thanks for the pics

 

[BTW]

Looks completely normal, carry on...

 

[OneEyeJack]

Varnish? Maybe it's butterscotch syrup.

In the last picture the thing to note is that there is no wear pattern in the camshaft lobes. Looks good.

 

[Bluestream]

All Normal, nothing to see here folks, move along

 

[tig1]

I would not want that on my engine. Oxidized oil creates varnish and can lead to ring coking.

 

[OneEyeJack]

An old farmer told me that to successfully combat varnish you have to first remove the precursors. Remove moisture which helps to prevent acid. Then he said that you must then filter the oil at ambient temperature which is why he uses a rig with toilet paper to gravity feed the oil through the paper and then back to the engine. This he said gets rid of 100% of the moisture as well. This also allows the varnish to agglomerate (his description, not mine) and be collected by the filter material.

He stated that ion filtration is a good crutch if you have to start cleaning up existing varnish.

He did say varnish is not to be ignored. He said that it caused wear and restricted movements in mechanical parts and increased wear in some areas by attracting harmful particles, loss of heat transfer, increased friction and wear. All this is important because he fixes and rebuilds almost everything.

He maintains a lot of machinery and does a great job. He has one 75 year old Cat dozer that is still in every day use and you guessed it, not a spec of varnish anywhere in that engine. He stated that it's easy to work on and everything is rebuildable, not like today's "junk" (his words, again).

 

[mjoekingz28]

Dont let Merkava 4 see the pictures.


.....the humanity

 

[Bluestream]

From a GM engineer and form Forum Member:

It looks perfectly fine to me or am I totally out to lunch...??? With that many miles on the motor the slight golden look to the dipstick is perfectly normal and NOT something to get upset in the least over.

Varnish forming on non-contact and non-functional surfaces like that is perfectly normal and fine and does not hurt anything nor indicate that any part of the engine is being damaged. That color is very typical of engines that run in hotter climates. I have seen teardowns of 150K engines from the desert southwest that have that color over the entire interior....never even considered that people might get "upset" over it....LOL. The engines that have that color look perfectly fine on wear surfaces such as bearings and piston skirts and such. That color on the dipstick means nothing.

Not that I am a fan of royal purple or anything but if that golden color is all that you have noticed keep on doing what you are doing and quite trying to analyze a problem that doesn't exist....

It is quite common to see even darker deposits on dipsticks where they pass close to the exhaust manifolds. Means nothing...other than that the dipstick is close to the exhaust manifold...LOL.


You guys REALLY need to get something serious to worry about....LOL LOL LOL...certainly NOT this.

http://www.bobistheoilguy.com/forums/ubbthreads.php/topics/129570/Re:_Varnish_on_dipstick#Post129570