IF I am reading this correct...Quaker State no longer has this sludge build up problem? Any other oils to stay clear of?

 

Quakerstate has no such problem. In the past many oils suffered form sludge buildup. It's just the way things were back in the olden days.

 

I just started my project, a 73 f100 w/ 360. It was in the family from new, and I KNOW it was abused. I took that monster apart and literaly used a gasket scraper, stiff brush, degreaser and pressure washer to get the junk off it before I could tank it. (after tanking the heads and finding it didnt come off, I had to try cleaning it first) The sludge was everywhere and baked in so it was almost as hard as the cast iron. I was happy the holes were not worn, so it didnt need to be sent out for machining.
Everything is clean now, and my parts arived (thanks UPS) yesterday, now time to find the time to throw all those parts into the block.

 

Pulled the pan off my 1970 360 which is a virgin motor (never been opened) and found a little layer of sludge I wiped out with paper towel... Other than that the engine was clean... SLudge build up hype is totaly over rated.

 

I just had apart a 1986 Olds with 3.8l V6 to put a new timing set on it. The engine just turned a 100,000 miles. Granny owned it and did many short trips Grampa changed the oil every 3000 miles. There is alot of caked on crud in the valve covers, but the oil pan looked pretty clean expept for all the plastic and metal shavings from the plastic timing gear. I think short trips are the worse thing, no matter how often you change the oil.

 

So apparently a clean pan and bottom end does not necessarily indicate a clean top end. So the next question is, for those who have pulled the pan and found it clean, did you also pull a valve cover and find it clean?

 

I would think you would always see more sludge on the heads than in the pan because of the higher heat and less oil flow. Oil likes to pool in the heads and boil off.

 

One of the other things I had to replace was valve cover gasket. Heads were clean too. Most of my driving is longer drives to work. 38 miles one way, so it does get to a good operating temperature.

 

Yes and so many of the reports posted above are not showing the full story. Kingfish51 is looking good though. Makes me wonder what my head looks like having had the half sludged pickup before.

 

I don't know if there was anything special about mine. I did 3k oil and filter oil changes and at that time I used Quaker state 10w30. I expect later when I started having some blow-by at 160k, it may have started to sludge up, but before that it was clean. I do remember while in the shop the one time, they had a T-bird with the intake manifold of and that thing was full of sludge. Had not been taken care of.