Eternal Timing Belt replacement job update

Got the cam seals off today and was presented with the seal packed with sludge.
Anyone have any idea how this happens and what do I need to look at next?
How serious is it? THANKS

 

That don't look good, looks like something I wiped earlier

Probably a lack of oil changes

 

Have you ever checked your PCV valve? Or took a peak under your valve covers?

 

not yet, i just bought it last month and this has been the first thing I have done to it. I guess taking the valve cover off is next.
Is it possible to take it off without doing the gaskets right now? Can I take it off and have a looksee and put it back? I really need to get some of this truck put backtogether before I get too deep into another project. ha

Assuming there is sludge in the cam case, how/where would it get into this small area behind the seals? Maybe this is old oil that could not get back into the cam case ( i dont know the terms)...like somthing is clogged. The drives side was 1/20 of this and just had a cpl small chunks.

 

Hmm, I think you probably could take a peak possibly. I've never done that though. Mine loosen up all the time so I keep a 10mm handy. I need to do gaskets on mine anyways. When I get around to doing my next timing belt/pump change I'm going to overhaul and freshen up several things like that. The truck usually looks immaculate under the hood but oil it's starting to creep out from my covers now that I'm over 400k. As far as the sludge, I don't have and exact answer but if you are just now buying this truck and don't know it's past, I might assume someone ran conventional oil and didn't change it very often and it sludged up but like I said that's a guess. I run Mobil 1 advanced full syn and I reckon that keeps any sludge cleaned out of my engine. I change every 10k but the oil is rated for 20k. If you clean it out and do good oil maintenance with top tier oil then I doubt you'll have that issue.

 

I think youre right..nothing to do but crack the covers now. With you having over 400k, I think once I am back up and running Ill adopt your approach of Mobil 1 AFS every 10K.

 

Put some sea foam in the oil a couple hundred miles before each oil change and it will slowly clean up the sludge. Prolly had short trips and few oil changes in past.

 

10k oil changes are a myth. 5k miles or 12 months, or if you do a lot of short-trip driving, 3.5k miles/6 months.

My truck had like 70k miles on it, verified. Got short-trip-driven faily for the first 55k miles by the original owner. This is what it looked like under the valve covers: https://www.tundras.com/threads/wha...-gen-tundra-today.2558/page-1294#post-2692222

Not dissimilar from your 400k mile engine's bottom-end. Loads of varnish. I've been slowly chipping away at the problem, and my top-end is more caramel-complected on the driver's head last time I snake cam'd it. To get there, I've been oil changing on the schedule I just provided, and I've been installing a full bottle of Seafoam High Mileage into the crankcase 400-600 miles before my next expected oil change. I also get up to operating temp just before doing my oil change to get any sludge in the crankcase in suspension before draining.

LiquiMoly and BG EPR are similar products. I find Seafoam to be gentler if you have patience, and I've used LiquiMoly in the past with VWs I've owned with good results. I happen to really like BG's products, though, and they would be my main choice if I wasn't a lifelong Seafoam user.

 

I do 10k oil changes on everything I own, except my FGT. It gets annual oil changes. Never had an engine failure or problem. Across all brands. With 150k plus miles on all of them. A BMW with 455k miles. My FGT with 272k miles. 10k with a quality full synthetic is fine if the conditions are right. Low dust, regular driving habits. I’ve never seen an oil analysis on 10k synthetic oil that didn’t say the oil had more life in it. It gets dirty mostly. So if your oil gets dirty, change it.

 

I've got one fgt to 350k and one fgt to 405k with 10K oil change intervals using Mobil 1 AFS and I've never had any issues whatsoever and it doesn't burn a drop of oil. The oil generally looks golden colored at 7-8k and so I always just go until my next maintenance required light comes on. I know some people are super sketched out by the idea of going that long on oil changes but I know some people who literally never change their oil. They just add a little bit over now and then. A long time ago I sent an oil sample to Blackstone labs when my truck was right at 300K and everything came back peachy. I was at somewhere around 12K on that oil change and they said the oil analysis showed it would have been good until somewhere around 23k. If I had a real engine sludge problem that I was trying to wash out I might change it sooner but I have nearly 700,000 miles between two trucks that have had that interval with no issues. If someone has Rock Solid proof that it shouldn't be done that way then I'm fine with that but I really just don't want to be changing my oil twice as often as necessary since this is one of the more expensive oils you can run. I do second the crankcase oil additives though. I use that stuff every now and then myself. I also do a lot of long interval driving. I sometimes drive a few hundred miles in a day. Short and sweet trips are not really a thing when you live out in the country like I do. If I just want to go to the grocery store it's an hour round trip so I feel like my engine always gets up temp and the miles are somewhat easy. And the environment that I'm in isn't particularly harsh. Maybe every now and then when I go on a off-roading trip out west it'll get a little dusty but that's it. Those are a 10,000 mile road trip once a year on its own when I do those.

 

As with all things, "y'all do you".

I personally wouldn't ever let my full syn oil go past 7.5k if I got that far in 12 months. But to each his own. I don't buy into 10k mile OCI, it would take someone at Blackstone themselves to come out and say 'overwhelming evidence XYZ make of oil is proven to support it'.

They'd probably say something along the lines of 'Royal Purple ...' but I'm not paying that kinda money for some purple-dyed lube.

 

Back when I sent my oil off to Blackstone labs and they told me my oil was still good at 12K, that's when I pretty much decided I was always going to do 10K intervals because that just works out better on my maintenance light to remind me. I drive a minimum of 35k per year and I had considered using Royal Purple because a lot of the tundra groups swear by it but I've been running Mobil 1 AFS for going on 18 years now and every oil change has been no sooner than 8K and I went on a large road trip that circled the country once that put me up to 14K. If I'm at 5K and I know that I'm about to go on a good size road trip I'll go ahead and change it then though. I probably should send another analysis to Blackstone now that I'm over 100,000 miles further down the road and just out of curiosity I would like to see what they say. I'm due to change my oil again at 410 k so I may do it then and report back. I don't blame anyone for not wanting to go that long on a change but some people don't drive as much as me and some people drive more than me. My dad will sometimes Drive his Power Stroke diesels to over 20k on an oil change and his trucks all have somewhere in the mid 300K range and they seem to do just fine using full synthetic oils but he drives a lot of miles also. I'd also be interested to know on higher mileage engines if more wear would require a heavier weight oil to fill in any wear gaps.

 

I guess I should probably Google, but how do you snake cam?

I'm soon to use seafoam in the crank case before my next oil change, but I would really love to see a before picture so I know my starting point without taking off the valve covers since they don't appear to be leaking, at least not significantly

 

They make a snake camera that you can probably buy Harbor Freight but if you already have any Milwaukee tools then they make a snake cam also to fit their batteries. I think DeWalt also makes one. Just go to Lowe's or Home Depot and tell them you want a snake cam and you can stick it down in your valve cover. They have a light on the end of them that you can turn on so that it will illuminate your camera screen when the camera is going into a dark area. I have one for work that I use a lot of times but the one I have I think I got for cheap at Lowe's

 

Get a snake cam that has a 180 degree articulating tip. You can insert through the sparkplug hole and see the pistons, cylinder walls, and flex it 180 to see the valves.

 

Popped the valve cover off and man was I stoked..clean with no sludge. The sludge is only in the small section behind the seal.
Does anyone know how the oil dispersed from the valve box to the the section behind the seal? If I only have sludge there then maybe its because the oil return path is clogged? I not a mechanic so just trying to figure it out..

 

I'd check the pcv and make sure it's not stoped up possibly causing too much crank case pressure and trying to make traces of oil seep into lower pressure places. Just a thought. Make sure that it rattles when you shake it. I just changed mine after 150,000 miles and it was still good but I changed it anyways.

 

Thanks..just added it to cart. Anything else I should change out while I'm in there?

 

I suspect that level sludge right there is a symptom of short-trip driving and/or infrequent/non-existent oil changes with budget oil. But what you're seeing may by typical for pre-VVTi behind the seals. I think @RUSTYNUTS has changed his, wonder if he found similar.

Nothing you can do but clean it out, maybe run a treatment or two thru it, and I'm happy to hear you didn't find similar under your valve covers if not already opened up. Some of the rest of us not so lucky, one being my low-mile truck, the other being @AV8R4AA: (example) (example) (example)

Anyway, clean it up and rest assured it'll flow better after.

 

5K or die here.

Short trips are defined as 10 minutes or less in my eyes. Anything over 15 minutes is considered normal for me

Do I know what under any of my valve covers look like? Absolutely not, ignorance is bliss

 

Nope. Nothing that solid or dark on my cam-seals. That looks like tar. or bong resin. Definitely the kinda gunk that'll clog up some shit. If I found my cam-seals looking like that, I would've pulled the valve covers to get all that crap outta there. My valve cover seals weren't leaking so the covers just got a torque-down and I never saw the insides

 

I pulled the covers..zero sludge.

 

thanks for tips and pics, Shifty. SInce I just bough it last month and only put about 30 miles on it before I tore into timing belt job, its possible that the previous owner had the same kind of sludge in the cylinder head and cleaned it out since its easy to get to, but didnt clean it out behind the seals because of the time it takes to get to that area. I cant see it just building up behind the seals..but I am def no mechanic.

In the cylinder head I took a few ounces of oil sitting in the bottom of it and sent off to blackstone. It looked a little on the thin side and the color of chocolate milk. Im waiting on the results to see if there is coolant mixed in with it. If so, im really close to the head gasket to have a look. I think im going to try to scrub the valve covers while I wait on the results. Not much more I can do.

 

The kind of guy who neglects oil changes is not the same kind of guy who pulls valve covers and removes sludge.

 

I do 10k oil changes but I’m all highway, if I did city, or stop and go, I’d probably do 5k.

I drove 30-35k a year no way I’m doing 5-7 oil changes a year.

Mobil 1 OEM filter valve train is cleaner than my toilet seat.

But OP, just throw in new VC gaskets and PCV valve. Super cheap and can be done start to finish in 30min.

 

I do 10K oil changes with Amsoil signature series, which is 25K mile rated and I use the fat spin on filter as well as a Frantz bypass filter. An oil change is 2 gallons for me. Almost all highway miles. Oil is clean when I drain it. Other guys with Frantz filters go 20K miles or more and the oil is still clean, but I figure it's time to replace the additives.