Under the valve cover of my Toyota 7AFE engine at 153296 miles

[MN Driver]

These pics are under the valve cover of my Toyota 7AFE engine from my 95 Geo Prizm at 153296 miles that I took yesterday.

No Auto-RX, Mobil 1 was in here since 139,960 miles, synthetic since 136k according to the previous owner. My most recent oil change, I decided to see what Delo 15w-40 would do with my UOA's. I've been using LC as well since I acquired the car. 500 miles into the current interval so the oil is coating the engine to make a brownish tint to everything, as you can see on the valve cover a gentle wipe with a shop towel and things are clean and silver-shiny for that center hourglass shaped part of the cover.

I meant to do this when I got it but I hadn't got around to it until now.

 

[JavaMan]

Looks purty.

 

[MN Driver]

I was a bit surprised, I thought that an engine this old wouldn't be this clean, I thank synthetic oil for cleaning up my old 3.4L V6 GM engine, I'm not sure what this 1.8L engine looked like beforehand though. I saw another image from a member, I forget who though who had the same engine at 205k miles that looked the about the same as mine, I wil be trying a few 5,000 mile runs of dino in the spring, as I have been buying up the 59 cent Chevron Supreme.

 

[MN Driver]

With the way that it looks to be designed with the drain hole towards the front of the vehicle it seems like one would expect there to be more oil laying around in there, it looks to me that there aren't other places for the oil to drain out to. Am I just confused over nothing because I see flat areas for the oil to be but there isn't any in those areas.

The timing belt looked decent, it still has that dull fabric look to it instead of that shiny worn out look, no cracks or anything to be found, did a light fingernail test and it seems to be resiliant and not hard, I think I will keep it in there for awhile as it a non-interference engine and according to Toyota it only needs to be changed with excessive idling or driving at low speeds for an extended period of time which I do not fit those criteria as I drive nearly all highway driving.

Is it going down the valve seals or is this normal and I am missing something? The engine was off about 30 minutes before taking this picture.

 

[Drew99GT]

Looks like mine, except mine's had all dino. You can see that the drainback is even with puddle so to speak so there shouldn't be anymore oil in there. The valves and lifters are deep in the head so there's a ton of oil chillin down there. No dry starts with that design! If oil was getting past the valve stem seals, you'd get a blue cloud everytime you start it.