Kia Sedona Sludge

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Hi all.

Recently acquired a 2015 Kia Sedona with 101k miles. Van was bought off Manheim from a bank repo and looked pretty clean. Out of the abundance of caution, I scheduled a ATF and coolant fluid exchange along with spark plugs replacements (105k due) and valve cover gasket with plug seals along with plenum gasket replacement. New plugs were NGK ruthenium HX. The day before I just did an oil change and the filter housing cap was a pain to get loose - needed a good strap wrench along with a 27mm 6 point socket to remove the cartridge filter and it was covered in sludge. Put in a new Wix filter along with Penzoil Ultra Platinum 10W-30. The mechanic recommended I use some engine flush after seeing the valve covers. I had some Lubegard Engine Flush on hand and proceeded to add a bottle, run the engine on idle for 20 mins then drain the oil. Checked the filter and it had some crud but reused it and added new Supertech Full Syn HM 10W-30 and another bottle of engine flush, ran it for 20 more mins on idle and then drained the oil, refilled with more ST Full Syn HM 10W-30 and a new Fram TG10855. I am planning on another engine flush soon but considered running the oil and filter for around 1k miles before adding a flush before the next oil change. The oil pan was not dropped. I believe the lower pan uses a gasket sealant. Have not located the PCV valve yet. I also purchased a small oil catch can but have not installed it yet. Engine is the common 3.3 V6 GDI Kia engine. My first DI engine.

Any advice or thoughts on how to proceed next would be greatly appreciated!

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Good luck cleaning that mess up. I hope it runs well for you. Honestly I think disassembly and hand cleaning would be best. Meaning remove the valve covers and clean whatever you can see, drop the oil pan clean whatever you can see along with the pickup tube and the screen for the pump. Then use your favorite slow engine cleaner with short oil and filter change intervals. Keep an eye on the oil level.
 
Get as much of that crud out of there. Use something pointed and sharp to chisel off the more stubborn deposits. Vacuum out all that get freed. You have to drop the pan as the scenario there is likely the same as the top of the engine. Check the cyl head gasket and cooling system. That brownish goo suggests coolant mixing with the oil.
 
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Pick up some spray cans as well as a bottles of Berryman B-12 Chemtool (you are going to need quite a bit). Drop the oil pan and spray the upper engine with the Berryman and pour some of the Berryman liquid into each of the cylinders. Let it sit over night. Take a nylon brush and continue spraying and cleaning the head. Rinse and repeat for the lower engine paying particular attention to the oil filter pickup screen. Reassemble and run a short OCI of about 100 miles and then repeat another for about 500 miles. This will be as clean as you are going to get it without completely disassembling the engine.
 
For some reason it seems more milky that oil sludge should? Or is it just weird lighting on the photos. I wonder what the possibility of it having a bad intake gasket or head gasket or something causing it to mix a bit of coolant in the oil - or maybe it's suffered extreme short tripping?

I wouldn't do anything too crazy to remove it flush wise, I would be afraid of having to take the pan off to clean the oil pump strainer. Maybe suck what you can out of the head with a vacuum, then try the B12 / Seafoam / Etc?
 
First of all: Those pictures are what nightmares are made from.

I bought an [ab]used Chevy Aveo a couple of years ago that had very similar buildup of snot inside the engine. It was a 2009 and they are notorious for oil cooler leaks. It had external oil seepage that I was willing to live with, but when I had to chase a valve cover PCV hose that was cracked and alternately sucking air or spewing oil all over that I found the mess it was making inside. I wish I had taken a picture but I was deep into it and working against a deadline.

Contrary to some of the more "roll up your sleeves and get in there" recommendations, I just put a new oil cooler on to stop the coolant cross-contamination and cleaned only what I needed to in order to get the gasket to seal properly. The oil pan is part of the bottom of the engine in this application and I already had most of the top of it taken apart and didn't want to turn an $1,800 beater into a resto-mod. I just changed the oil early a few times and it's been cleaning up slowly on it's own. I'm of the opinion that, as long as the oil can drain back to the pan, short OCI and not dislodging all the cholesterol at once is a better path. The first few OCI turned black and "gooey" in less than 1,000 miles and is slowly getting better. I used whatever odds and ends of oil that I had lying around. It's under powered for traffic around here so I run it WOT for every acceleration. So far, so good.

Your mileage may vary.
 
Why not use diesel oil. I believe that would provide the most cleaning affect for oil by itself. Maybe ST 15w40 or better yet a 5w40.
 
I would get one of those buckets with the hand pump on it, drain the oil, fill the pump with solvent, remove the valve cover and cycle away.
 
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I have seen worse that was cleaned up with shorter intervals and no heroics. As mentioned above, your mileage may vary but with that build up I would use a good cleaning oil at shorter intervals and have another look under the valve covers after three or four cycles.
 
Being a 2015, the poor thing probably never had an oil change. I'd probably wipe out as much gunk as I could and do 3-4 short succession OCIs. If you could easily get to the oil pan, dropping that would be interesting, but hopefully the build-up is just up top and not on the pickup screen.
 
You could take it apart and meticulously clean everything, but personally I'd just run some 10w-30 HDEO on shorter OCIs and maybe throw in some MMO. Should take care of it over time.
 
Originally Posted by writes123


Recently acquired a 2015 Kia Sedona with 101k miles. Van was bought off Manheim from a bank repo and looked pretty clean.




Ummm, sure ... on the outside. The previous owner couldn't make the car payments, and probably did ZERO maintenance of any kind. Hope it was really cheap ...
 
There are a few cars that I would never buy used unless they had the maintenance records. Kia, lower end Nissan, and lower end FCA products. Why you ask? These manufactures usually pray on subprime buyers and have the lowest priced cars available. In my experience, these subprime buyers tend to not do the recommended maintenance. They can just afford the car payments and gas. This is what you get. Sure, I know not every subprime buyer neglects their car but why risk it?
 
Originally Posted by jcartwright99
There are a few cars that I would never buy used unless they had the maintenance records. Kia, lower end Nissan, and lower end FCA products. Why you ask? These manufactures usually pray on subprime buyers and have the lowest priced cars available. In my experience, these subprime buyers tend to not do the recommended maintenance. They can just afford the car payments and gas. This is what you get. Sure, I know not every subprime buyer neglects their car but why risk it?


People of all socioeconomic classes neglect cars.

That was the case when I was working on consumer cars, and according to friends and former colleagues who still work on consumer cars, that is still true.
 
Originally Posted by MichiganMadMan
I'm of the opinion that, as long as the oil can drain back to the pan, short OCI and not dislodging all the cholesterol at once is a better path.

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Originally Posted by writes123
The day before I just did an oil change and the filter housing cap was a pain to get loose


How much oil drained out? Any oil change sticker on the windshield?
 
Originally Posted by SatinSilver
Originally Posted by writes123
The day before I just did an oil change and the filter housing cap was a pain to get loose


How much oil drained out? Any oil change sticker on the windshield?


Close to 7 quarts were drained out; so I'm guessing a bit overfilled. Nothing of major note but an extremely dark oil. No oil change sticker. I have a suspicion that the oil filter was left unchanged due to the extreme lengths I went to remove the filter housing. The oil drain bolt was pretty "worn". It looks like it was wrench a number of times for a drain.
 
Originally Posted by writes123
Close to 7 quarts were drained out; so I'm guessing a bit overfilled. Nothing of major note but an extremely dark oil. No oil change sticker. I have a suspicion that the oil filter was left unchanged due to the extreme lengths I went to remove the filter housing. The oil drain bolt was pretty "worn". It looks like it was wrench a number of times for a drain.


That's good about the amount that drained out and the worn bolt. Not changing the filter does happen and I've witnessed it first hand. When I brought in my dad's car for new tires and an oil change. One of those GY tire places.
 
It doesn't look bad to me, IMO. There's much worse.

If it was me, I'd mechanically clean up as much sludge as possible with non-chlorinated brake cleaner and a soft, non-metallic brush. The reason for the non-chlorinated brake cleaner is that perc/trichloroethylene turns into phosgene gas when heated. Then cheap filter, Euro-spec oil or a HDEO(Hyundai Kia specs heavier oil outside of the US and Korea) and do short and successive OCIs. Wouildn't hurt to run some good engine flush(BG, Amsoil, Liqui Moly or Kreen) before dumping the oil to knock down some of the deposits. I think M1 FS, Castrol Edge 0W-30, or the 10W-30 variants of Delo/Delvac/Rotella would be a good choice. After the sludge problem has been taken care of, stick to a good D1G1 approved oil and keep the OCIs reasonable.

If you can afford it, Vavoline Premium Blue Restore from a Cummins dealer for its higher ester content and aggressive detergents but be prepared to pay for it.
 
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