Bad sump seals? Nope, oil SLUDGE!

[Brickbox8398]

I had all the tell tale signs that my sump seals were gone. Pretty loud ticking at idle. And it would go away with sustained rpm’s like highway driving which is mostly what I do. The noise got Especially worse after replacing an 80% clogged ORIGINAL PCV. I think the crankcase pressure was actually helping oil flow because the car was dead quiet when I got it. I don’t normally do engine additives but I wanted to give it a shot at first, as an experiment. Lucas oil stabilizer did not help (makes sense after knowing what was in the pan). STP high mile oil additive appeared to help but only sometimes, and I think it was a placebo. I had a good theory though, because I mistakenly put full synthetic non-high mileage oil in the first oil change. I have heard of issues with this in older cars so I was convinced that it disturbed my “bad sump seals”. I assumed that I was in need of oil with a seal sweller. But as I said that did not work.

And so I finally committed to this somewhat nerve racking repair but it actually turned out well. With great thanks to Robert DIY’s video but mostly to “Inline 5” on YouTube. His two part video actually had some helpful tips that Robert did not mention. Upon oil pan removal I found large amounts of sludge. It almost had the consistency of wet coffee grounds. I haven’t had the car long but I changed the oil when I first got it and it was a very dark brown and somewhat different from what I’ve seen. However I didn’t notice any chunks so I didn’t think much of it. I will say the filter was rusted so I know the oil was about 5 years old at least. And the car has been off the road for the same amount of time until I got it. So my seals were good but I replaced them anyway and used about 3 gallons of gas and elbow grease removing the sludge. There were piles of it between the baffles. A little less so right at the pickup. And at the time of removal the pickup was was only partially clogged. But you know it was circulating around there when the engine was hot. Which makes sense why I wouldn’t always get a noisy top end. It depended on what the sludge was doing at that time. Seems like the sump would eventually pickup the sludge and clog things up. But mostly fall off the screen after letting the car sit. The crankcase seemed clean enough so I didn’t feel compelled to do any cleaning there. I will say I never got an oil pressure light but the sounds my car was making were very much not good. When I got the car inspected he said “I didn’t know they sold the diesel in the US!” Lol! The repair went well and there are no leaks luckily! I am glad this didn’t turn out to be an actual lifter issue. My car is dead quiet now and I am thrilled to give it a new life.

[scot850]

Well done indeed! Wow, that oil pan was nasty. Glad it worked out in the end using a lot of elbow grease.

Neil.