Sludged Frontier

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Yeah, that's nasty!
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I'd do exactly what was recommended to him: Put it back together, change the oil like normal and drive it until it dies.
 
And here is the complete opposite of that pic.
This was the inside of a co workers - 2004 Nissan Frontier with the same VG33E engine. 80K miles on it .
Mostly run on yearly oil changes of Mobil 1 5w30.
 
This is another example of a buyer not inspecting the vehicle or even looking at the service records.
 
Those are pretty tough engines. My neighbor had one that went 400,000 miles before he bought a new one and gave it to his son. His son is still driving it today.
 
I would put an engine flush in it just to see what happens. Or i would switch to the cheapest synthetic oil I could find and change it every 4k miles til it dies or PYB every 2500. For all you know, the sludge might not be affecting the parts that need the oil the most. Who knows, if you start the slow cleaning process, it might last another 50k miles.
 
Originally Posted By: CT8
This is another example of a buyer not inspecting the vehicle or even looking at the service records.



Bingo!
 
I don't really see the issue.

Clean it with a solvent, and then flush the oil return passages of debris. Drop the oil pan and clean the pan and oil pickup and then fill it with oil and drive it. If there is sludge left after flushing the passages it will be small and either not block the oil pickup screen or pass through it and go to the oil filter. If it does get caught in the pickup screen the detergents will eventually dissolve the sludge.

Don't let someone on the internet saying "sludge will clog the oil pickup if you clean it" scare you.
 
Originally Posted By: DemoFly
I don't really see the issue.

Clean it with a solvent, and then flush the oil return passages of debris. Drop the oil pan and clean the pan and oil pickup and then fill it with oil and drive it. If there is sludge left after flushing the passages it will be small and either not block the oil pickup screen or pass through it and go to the oil filter. If it does get caught in the pickup screen the detergents will eventually dissolve the sludge.

Don't let someone on the internet saying "sludge will clog the oil pickup if you clean it" scare you.


Actually, sludge will clog the screen if you try to clean that mess. I would just change the oil at regular intervals and run it until it dies.
 
The pick-up screen already looks just like that. No harm in aggressively cleaning it, drop the pan and clean that mess including the pick-up screen. Rum some shotgun bore brushes down the oil returns.

Then run it on Rotella 5W-40 and install an oversized filter to grab the stuff that comes through. Change every 3,000 and in ten changes or so it will be decent.

The thing we did not find out is how it runs ... If it runs OK, it will continue to do so
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