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Nice work. Sorry to hear about the oil pressure woes though. If you can, post up pics while dropping the pan. I'd like to see that.
I really wanted to take more pics but I am sooooooo tired of this job I just had to finish it. (The "queen" has had her car in the garage for over a month and has been driving my A3...Hopefully I will still have brakes/wheels when I get it back.) Here's the deal with the oil pan. I actually read the manual and this is what they say to do: Remove the oil cooler, remove the pan bolts, remove the pan. Surprisingly, there was only two more steps, and that was taking the sway bar down so that you can get to the pan bolts easier and also, the trans cooler lines are bolted to the pan and that bracket has to come off. Took me roughly 20 minutes.
So here's what I found in the pan. Imagine if you poured chocolate syrup into a pan and left it out in the sun for about a month... This is what the bottom of the pan was caked with. Slimy, thick and really stuck. The pickup screen had a good amount of it along with some harder carbon like bits that took scraping to dislodge. It took about an hour to scotch brite and scrape the mess out. I only found two very small bits of what look like the outside corners of the tensioner guides that were missing on the ones I took off so it looks like the rest of the guides/tensioners are still intact. I thought about taking the oil pump out but I didnt know if there were some gaskets or seals that might be compromised so I just sprayed carb and brake cleaner up into it and what drained back out was really nasty. Before:
After:
The best news of all is that I no longer have a low oil pressure light. The engine runs really smoothly and the throttle response is better than it ever was. I have a slightly rough idle now but the plugs were really black with carbon, (like the valves, the intake and the oil) so I am going to replace those today.
Fastbird, thanks for you help and support throughout. Also, thanks to Clevercrow for the phone calls and suggestions.
great job on getting that pan cleaned up...it looks amazing. It appears that the previous owner of the car certainly waited awhile between oil changes and when they did do them, may not have used the 'best' grade of oil. I'm sure with the job you did, the car is loving you for it Cheers and thanks for the great contribution.
So here's what I found in the pan. Imagine if you poured chocolate syrup into a pan and left it out in the sun for about a month... This is what the bottom of the pan was caked with. Slimy, thick and really stuck. The pickup screen had a good amount of it along with some harder carbon like bits that took scraping to dislodge. It took about an hour to scotch brite and scrape the mess out. I only found two very small bits of what look like the outside corners of the tensioner guides that were missing on the ones I took off so it looks like the rest of the guides/tensioners are still intact. I thought about taking the oil pump out but I didnt know if there were some gaskets or seals that might be compromised so I just sprayed carb and brake cleaner up into it and what drained back out was really nasty. Before:
After:
The best news of all is that I no longer have a low oil pressure light. The engine runs really smoothly and the throttle response is better than it ever was. I have a slightly rough idle now but the plugs were really black with carbon, (like the valves, the intake and the oil) so I am going to replace those today.
Fastbird, thanks for you help and support throughout. Also, thanks to Clevercrow for the phone calls and suggestions.
well done and good to know the pan is not a big deal.
I believe you said 130k on engine and you do M1 0w40 every 5k? So how many miles of abuse before you took over?
This should dispel any myth of 10k OCI being acceptable.
I bought the car with 89k miles on it. It was a former certified used car that had all services done at the dealership. I have records of all 9 oil changes. I have been changing every 5k since I have owned it 3years). I have used nothing but Mobil 1 0w30. Guess they must have driven it on short trips or something.
I knew nothing about this glop until I took the valve covers off to do the tensioners. Even then, I figured since I had been doing the services, how bad could it be? Well, as it turns out, most likely the old tensioner was fine and I have a restriction somewhere on the drivers side oil passage or both sides. As of yesterday, the Drivers side tensioner (the new one I put in 50 miles ago) has now failed and probably bent valves on that side.
The nightmare continues. So now, I get to see the left side of the motor and do another valve job on that side. The only good news is that I have almost all of the parts as I bought a complete set for the whole motor when I did the passenger side. This is a really, really tough lesson to learn about poor maintenance by the previous owner.
The symptom of the latest failure was the return of the clattering upon startup and then when I stopped to get gas, I hit the starter and all hell broke loose on the drivers side. I now makes the lovely sound of the drive gear just slipping under the chain. I know I will find that the tensioner piston will be ratcheted back into the housing. I really don't understand why the ratcheting mechanism is there but I guess under normal circumstances, there isn't that much pressure on it. For the very first time in my life, I had to have a car towed back to my garage. Very humbling.
So....Everyone will get a DIY on how to yank the drivers side head, do a valve job, clean whatever oil passages I can find/reach and put the whole mess back together. Just finished the right side but was in a hurry so I didn't take pics. Sometimes it just sucks to be me...
The nightmare continues. So now, I get to see the left side of the motor and do another valve job on that side. The only good news is that I have almost all of the parts as I bought a complete set for the whole motor when I did the passenger side. This is a really, really tough lesson to learn about poor maintenance by the previous owner.
ouch. I know some hardcore guys that pull a vc as part of pre-buy inspection. I personally have never done so, relying instead on service history, but i may re-think that....
good news is you have a lot of the parts already, and certainly the familiarity with the job. I think you are wise to clean out all the oil passages. I have had moderately good success with BG quik clean---be patient, may take several flushes with fresh oil each time in between. no more than 4000 rpm with the solvent in there. drain hot to keep varnish from re-depositing.
Wow, really sorry to see this happen. The bigger question is what other problems are going to rear their heads with the sludge issue you've got? How are the main and rod bearings holding up, etc. What a bummer.
one other thought occurred to me: since you are pulling the head, you might look at the oil passages and drill them out slightly. I know this could be playing with fire if the castings are thin, and i really don't know if they are or not so take my musing for what it is.
Back when i used to build BBFord motors this was pretty common on an iron block, some of the 60's ford v8s would oil the center camshaft bearings first from above and then the mains....kinda assbackward so we would enlarge the passages. The side oiler 427s with the cross bolted mains were the bomb. amazing how elements of that design remain 50 years later.
11-26-2014, 06:27 AM
Oil Pan cleaning
Cheers and thanks for the great contribution.
