When you click on links to various merchants on this site and make a purchase, this can result in this site earning a commission. Affiliate programs and affiliations include, but are not limited to, the eBay Partner Network.
We recently swapped out the 302 in my friends 1993 F150. He is giving the old 302 to another friend to build for his mustang. He pulled the top end today and we were all shocked at what we saw inside. This is a 2 owner truck with 170k miles. We are guessing the first owner didn’t take the best care of it. My friend only had it for the last 30k miles. This engine was running and driving just fine when removed aside from leaking 8 quarts of oil per week.
Not good, but not the worst I ever seen of this era 5.0. Did valve cover gaskets on an 89ish Bronco. All you could see were the rockers, and the "channels" that the oil had cut to the drain holes in the heads. Shopvac and a screwdriver got the majority of it. I showed the owner and told him that if the heads are this bad, the valley and pan were probably similar or worse. He needed to have it stripped down and cleaned. If not the pump screen could get clogged and wreck the engine. No idea what happened after I gave it back though.
83 lincon with a 302. 65k miles and the oil light came on in 87. they brought it into my shop for oil change.
pulled plug and only 1 quart of oil came out. dropped pan and it was full of sludge except for where the pickup was.
called customer and told them i can clean the engine but there was no guarantee it would last.
two years later it was back with same issue. when i pulled the plug and only got 1 quart out again i told him it needed a new engine. he balked at the cost so i offered him $1000 for it as is.
put a new engine in it and sold it to my frame guy who drove it for another 20 years doing only routine maintenance.
seems the other guy did not believe in routine service. only fix when it breaks.
Not good, but not the worst I ever seen of this era 5.0. Did valve cover gaskets on an 89ish Bronco. All you could see were the rockers, and the "channels" that the oil had cut to the drain holes in the heads. Shopvac and a screwdriver got the majority of it. I showed the owner and told him that if the heads are this bad, the valley and pan were probably similar or worse. He needed to have it stripped down and cleaned. If not the pump screen could get clogged and wreck the engine. No idea what happened after I gave it back though.
The F250 with a 5.8 in it I had back in the late 80's was the same. Valve covers came off and it looked like a jelly mold under it. Valley was the same. I did the same. Shop vac, screw drivers, and putty knives to clean it out. I never did pull the pan, but the engine ran for years after. Did a LOT of oil changes after the clean out. It was not really that bad when I did pull it apart years later when the crank broke.
That kinda looks like it had a bad decade, and then the next person was a lot
better about changes... it's odd how it's not evenly coating everything, but looks
like it's... precipitated... Or maybe someone did a couple of solvent flushes
a good while back, and that got a lot of the softer stuff out?
I've seen a lot of sludge, but that's more like coking that's broken loose.
seen many a lot worse in my dealer shop days. most of the time it was due to the cheap oil from carwash oil changes, and by cheap i mean the re-re done oil they buy for a buck a gallon for thier $29,99 changes
Almost 40 years ago, I bought my folks a '79 LTD in late 1986, and it was a 'low-mileage' 45k-mile 'sludgemobile'. I seriously doubt that the oil was changed since new! Upon taking off the valve covers, it looked like Jell-o 'Jigglers' in the shape of the valvecovers! I removed as much of the slime as I could, and did an oil change. A week/100 miles later I did another oil change and did a 1qt oil, 2qts kerosene, 2-qts ATF oil/filter change and let it idle for 2 two hours... another oil change... least this time, the 'chunks' coming out of the drain plug were less pronounced... 5qts of 10W30 and sent it down the road - sold that POS in 1987...
Not good, but not the worst I ever seen of this era 5.0.
I've seen much worse.
This is how you save money. You do basic maintenance and cut that in half or quarters. You sell the vehicle to someone else. Done right, it is sold a few weeks before it breaks down.
Years ago I worked at a shop where the owner would buy a new truck every 3 years and bragged about the money he saved by never changing the oil.
He just said that it would not fail in the time he owned it. I guess that’s true.
Rezvani's Latest Post-Apocalyptic Monster Is a Ford F-150 Raptor Underneath
Slideshow: Called the Fortress, the 850-horsepower pickup combines Raptor underpinnings with military-inspired features, survival equipment, and a starting price of $285,000.
