Sludge removal project (with pics)

[Spyder7]

On the day I joined the forum BITOGers nailed the culprit of my sledged up Corolla to a faulty PCV valve. There were some requests for pics, here's what I have so far:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spyder73/4897323519/

First pic was taken on July 23/10 and shows the sludge build up when I first really noticed it. Its not the highest quality shot (limits of my cell phone camera used), but you can make out the baked on sludge through the oil fill hole. Harder to see in this pic are the clumps on the fill cap.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spyder73/4897323627/

Second pic was taken July 30/10. Joined BITOG on the 28th, ordered the replacement OEM valve on the 29th, and I installed it when it arrived the next day. You can see how gummed up the 10 year old factory valve is. OEM replacement is still in its baggy behind it, fresh from the local Toyota dealer.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/spyder73/4897342957/

Same thing but a better angle.

That's the photo backdrop to the project. I'm about 2,000 km into the same oil that was put in shortly before the first pic was taken (Toyota 5W30). About 1,500 km on the filter (M1 EP).

I still have the filter that was removed only a few days before that first pic was taken. I plan to cut it open and add pics of it, along with (hopefully) a better "through the hole" crankcase shot, which shows some cleanup since that first pic was taken and the PCV valve replaced.

This project is still ongoing, so I'll update when there's more to add.

-Spyder

 

[robshelton]

Does anybody clean PCV valves anymore? I do. About every other oil change I pull it out and spray some carb cleaner thru it or soak it in purple cleaner for a while. Mine is still the OE steel one and I know many are plastic so those are not going to get the carb cleaner treatment.

 

[Spyder7]

I doubt any service station does. Until I bought the car, this one was mostly dealer serviced, and the remainder (except tires) was done at Meineke. The PCV valve in mine had never been removed since it left the factory, til the day I replaced it.

Where it was 10 years old and about $12, I figured it was just as well to replace it.

I still have to clean the IAC valve. It came with a bad cold start problem that's almost cured. IAC is the only thing left to do. Then a coolant flush for the winter and its good to go except for oil changes and replacing the base pan (and some minor body work I'm still creeping along at).

Fun car to work on though. Very clean design. Wish the Hayes Repair manual for this car was better, but with lots of supplementary content on the net, its good enough.

-Spyder

 

[Lethal1ty17]

throw some MMO in there.

you really should pop off the valve cover.

 

[saberz]

No need to pop it off, the oil will clean it out itself with a new PCV. MMO will help expedite the process, use it towards the last 500 miles of the OCI.

 

[mechtech2]

A new PCV valve won't get that clean. manual cleaning is in order.
We can get lucky and a PCV system will work right without any care for years, and sometimes they fail and horrible things happen.
sometimes permanent damage occurs.

 

[Spyder7]

Originally Posted By: Lethal1ty17
throw some MMO in there.

you really should pop off the valve cover.


I'm afraid of what I'll see underneath (the in-person look through the fill hole is horrific enough)

.

I'll pop it off and take some shots before the PP goes in (I'll do it just for BITOG, just not on a full stomach). And shots of the last filter I removed hacked open in all its gory (the oil inside it was blacker than coal when I removed it).

-Spyder

 

[panthermike]

Thanks for doing this Spyder, I'll be interested to see the progress.

 

[Lethal1ty17]

yes thank you very much.

 

[Spyder7]

The Toyota oil is out (1,991 km on it), the PP 5W30 is in. I kept my M1 EP filter on as the 1,500 km on it is nothing (its designed to go 15,000 miles). In any case, next oil change it will come off and I will open it up and post pics.

I used a $15 fluid extraction hand pump for the oil change. The only good thing to say about it is that it worked as advertised, and judging by the amount of oil removed and replaced, it got about 98% of it. That was after about 3 hours of screwing around with it though. Major PITA but it got the job done. I did not get the valve cover off yet, as after 3 hours of slow cooking in the sun while getting an arm workout pumping this thing, I needed shade before I got sun stroke.

Took lots of pics though (will post the best ones soon, and when it cools down I will take a go at popping the valve cover off).

The stuff that came out was a lot blacker than it looked on the dipstick. I used 2 empty 2L plastic pepsi bottles to empty it into, and you would be hard pressed to tell that it wasnt Pepsi inside them.

I took it for a quick 20 km test drive after the OC was done. This is the first time this car has ever seen syn (other than a small amount as top up oil), and my first time trying PP. Initial impression: engine gets up to temp a lot faster than before, oil light (when starting) barely blinks, and the car seems to like it (it was already quiet, now its even quieter).

That first impression, plus its impressive additive package, TBN, pour point and cold crank numbers, is enough incentive for me to grab as much as I can whenever I see it on rollback at WM. Now in 3,000 miles we see how it does on the sludge (combined with MMO for the last 500 miles - StevieC hooked me up with a quart of it as availability here still sucks).

-Spyder

 

[Hokiefyd]

I think routine maintenance of the PCV valve is smart. I replaced what appeared to be the original one on my '97 Dakota about 6 months after I bought the truck (bought it with 168,000 miles). The valve was NOT coming out of the grommet (it was just a press-in grommet) and I actually broke the plastic stem off the PCV valve. So I had to remove the valve cover, chip the grommet out with a friggin chisel, and then try to "flush" the broken grommet pieces from where they lay on top of the built-in oil baffle in the valve cover. It was a job for sure.

So yeah, regular maintenance of the PCV valve (and exercise of that grommet) is a good thing.

 

[Spyder7]

My PCV valve was also factory. It required so much torque to remove I had to borrow a massive adjustable wrench (nothing I had would budge it). I was actually starting to wonder if it was somehow welded into place, before it finally gave.

I have seen improvement in the 1,500 km or so since I replaced it. Today when I removed the oil cover to pour in the PP, I saw a nice amount of varnish and much less baked on sludge as compared to when the first pic I posted was taken. At that time, it was just a black cesspool under the cover. Black sludge baked onto every visible part of the crankcase with it clumped up in places. Seeing varnish is a huge improvement.

I am also giving some of the credit to the M1 EP filter (though it could not do it without the PCV valve being replaced first). Its one of the most efficient filters you can buy, so whatever the oil can loosen, the filter will grab & hold it - I think pics of it cut open in 3k miles will bear that out.

Using the combo of the PP (Ultra is not yet available hear), the M1 EP filter, and MMO for the last 500 miles, I have a pretty solid plan in place. With PP as cheap as it is right now, and enough MMO in the quart bottle to use in the crankcase for 2 doses, I will be able run this combo back to back for 2 consecutive 3k mile OCs. By then I am hoping to see a much cleaner engine (and I expect to). This and the tc-w3 as a UCL may also free up my sticky piston rings (and if not, I already have an MMO piston soak planned to take care of that, as detailed elsewhere by Letal1ty17).

-Spyder

 

[Gary Allan]

While this is your project/experiment, I can't see PP being a large contributing member here. Or rather, if MMO is such a substantial/pivotal element (which one would think it would be) wouldn't a less expensive conventional be more sensible for that short an OCI?

I mean, as much as PP is a dandy product, that marketing lingo of (what was it?) 46% more deposit removal could have been dealing in micro-grams under who knows what conditions when compared to a competitor. I can't see it contributing THAT much more... over any other oil.. with an MMO laced sump.

 

[demarpaint]

I agree. MMO will do a bang up job with a cheap dino and a 3000-4000 mile OCI.

 

[Spyder7]

According to the VOAs on it, PP has over 3,000 units of calcium in it. Thats lab analysis, not marketing hype. Its why I believe it to be more effective than dinos at breaking up the sludge for the filter to trap. I will contrast it with GTX, as this was my old standby in the past and a regular Walmart rollback, which has just over 2,000 parts calcium.

GTX, on its usual rollback, is $11 for 5 quarts here. PP was $19. Except for PYB and Supertech (which have also been rolled back lately), the PP is $3 to $4 more than the rest of the dinos available at Walmart.

I have enough PP on hand for 2 OCs, plus enough Syntec for a 3rd. Given the relatively low price (PP is regularly $35 here, as are most other syns) it made more sense to use the better product that I have on hand than to buy dino that I dont - especially since it looks like PP will be staying at half price for awhile. For as long as this rollback lasts, it makes no sense at all to buy any dino when its money that could be spent stockpiling PP while the half price rollback continues.

Once the goldmine is over (which will be around the time Ultra arrives I am predicting), I will see how much PP I have stockpiled, and then I may consider buying dino again. But theres no way I am buying dino while PP is half price. From a rational economic standpoint, that is a total waste of money (contrary to what common sense would seem to dictate).

Edit: aside from the above, I consider this a project and I like to try and inject some fun into them. Trying PP for the first time to see how it does is part of the fun. The point of the project isnt to do it as cheaply as possible, nor is it to evaluate the merits of MMO. If an extra $8 bucks fits within the scope of what I am trying to achieve, to me its 8 bucks well spent and I wont lose any sleep on it. I spend more than that on a Bluray disc destined to be watched once and entertain for 90 minutes. The PP will be doing its thing over the course of hundreds of hours of driving.

-Spyder

 

[Gary Allan]

Quote:
Once the goldmine is over (which will be around the time Ultra arrives I am predicting), I will see how much PP I have stockpiled, and then I may consider buying dino again. But theres no way I am buying dino while PP is half price. From a rational economic standpoint, that is a total waste of money (contrary to what common sense would seem to dictate).


The only counter point I would offer is that while PP is a steal now, it won't be forever. Now if you're going to use it transparently with conventional, then your "continuum" is unaltered. However if PP were to be used to it normal cost:benefit equivalency over conventional, then using conventional NOW, regardless of the minor price difference ..when it will still be (probably) the same price later, will allow you "oil in the bank" so to speak as far as value is concerned.

 

[lexus114]

Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Quote:
Once the goldmine is over (which will be around the time Ultra arrives I am predicting), I will see how much PP I have stockpiled, and then I may consider buying dino again. But theres no way I am buying dino while PP is half price. From a rational economic standpoint, that is a total waste of money (contrary to what common sense would seem to dictate).


The only counter point I would offer is that while PP is a steal now, it won't be forever. Now if you're going to use it transparently with conventional, then your "continuum" is unaltered. However if PP were to be used to it normal cost:benefit equivalency over conventional, then using conventional NOW, regardless of the minor price difference ..when it will still be (probably) the same price later, will allow you "oil in the bank" so to speak as far as value is concerned.



WOW ! that`s a heavy-duty mind set Gary!

 

[Spyder7]

Originally Posted By: Gary Allan
Quote:
Once the goldmine is over (which will be around the time Ultra arrives I am predicting), I will see how much PP I have stockpiled, and then I may consider buying dino again. But theres no way I am buying dino while PP is half price. From a rational economic standpoint, that is a total waste of money (contrary to what common sense would seem to dictate).


The only counter point I would offer is that while PP is a steal now, it won't be forever. Now if you're going to use it transparently with conventional, then your "continuum" is unaltered. However if PP were to be used to it normal cost:benefit equivalency over conventional, then using conventional NOW, regardless of the minor price difference ..when it will still be (probably) the same price later, will allow you "oil in the bank" so to speak as far as value is concerned.



Gary, rather than debate that point with you - I will simply ask, what price do you put on fun. I think for most, 8 bucks is not much. Being a bachelor, I cant even take a chick on a date for 8 bucks. It will buy maybe one combo at Burger King.

So instead I will fall back on the points I already made: the big one being that the project was envisioned all along as using PP & MMO in conjunction, and that I had then the PP already on hand for it and the MMO lined up.

This is why I got out of management (I hate bean counting - particularly when it comes to my own projects, where having fun doing them is a big part of it, and counting every nickel and dime spent or saved just kills it completely).

Were the goal, or even a criteria, of this, to do it as cheaply as possible, your point would be valid. But its neither, so I wont debate that with you (or anyone else). The PP is already in. Its not like Im going to go siphon it out just so I can drive to Walmart, pick up dino I dont have, drive home, and put that in instead. If you want to talk economics, then the economic model would take the market value of my time spent doing that into account as well (which is what separates it from accounting). I can assure you that it would cost a lot more than 8 bucks I would save.

-Spyder

 

[Gary Allan]

Quote:
Gary, rather than debate that point with you - I will simply ask, what price do you put on fun. I think for most, 8 bucks is not much. Being a bachelor, I cant even take a chick on a date for 8 bucks. It will buy maybe one combo at Burger King.


Oh, don't interpret this as an indictment against what you're doing, per se~. I spend all kinds of money on "fun". Most of us are tightwads in our fun distractions ..that's all. I've bought thousands of dollars worth of hardware for hundreds (retail vs. salvage)..and did it for no other reason than I wanted to. I wouldn't have done it otherwise. In those cases it was truly a case of finding a purpose for the ultimate in fine junque~.

..but in a parallel move that I'll surely be forced to make at one point or another, I too will probably end up using some expensive piece in an otherwise unremarkable manner just to use it. Otherwise, it would just fill my boxed shrine of fine junque~.

 

[Spyder7]

Fair enough. I mentioned elsewhere that a big part of why I am doing this now was that watching the PP sit on my shelf, and not running in my car, was like having an itch I had to scratch. Today I finally gave in and scratched it.

Partly it was just doing today what I had already envisioned doing a little later (the PP & MMO combo). A lot of it was curiosity. Pennzoil makes some pretty big claims about what their Platinum oil can do. My car, in its present condition is an ideal test bed for those claims. Lab analysis of their add pack gives me reason to believe that there is some fact to it, and that it is not all marketing hype.

Throw in the fact that this car has never seen syn, that I have PP kicking around on my shelf that I had never tried before, and a nice day off to do this, and all the key ingredients were there for me to try it today.

When something really piques my curiousity, I can be pretty stubborn about finding everything out about it I can. In this case, I had done the research on it already. All that was left was to actually put it in and see first hand what it would do.

-Spyder