well i changed my oil the other day,pulled the plug and oil started to come out and stopped ,put a screw driver in hole and it started coming out again,this time it looked like a snake ,all sludge.got it all drained .filled with 30 wt and ran .my question is what is the best way to get the sludge out .48 chevy fleetmaster .this car sat in a barn since 72.when i drained the oil when i got it ,it had close to 20 qts in it .a buddy of mine told my kerosene works .any other ideas?
A friend of mine used to leave the oil drain plug out and pour diesel fuel through the crankcase (ENGINE OFF!). When he was satisfied he then poured a couple of new quarts of oil to help rinse out the diesel. I don't know if this is a recommended method but it never hurt his engines.
Seems to me if it had 20 quarts in it,,must have been a lot of water mixed with it...Thats 4 times the amount needed,I dont think someone would keep putting oil in someting thats already full.
Way back in the old days (the 60's) we used diesel oil. There were plenty of nasty engines still using non-detergent oil in those days. Warm the engine (not hot), drain the oil but leave the filter. Put in 4 qts of diesel, which is equivalent to 5wt, start the engine and let it idle for 5 minutes then drain all and start fresh. The danger is that you can break loose more stuff than you really want to and it is possible to clog the pickup screen with gooey shit. .
If it had 20 qts. in it, when they stored it for that long they may have filled it with alot of old oil to keep it from sticking. Bought a couple old cars done like that. We used to call it pickling, fill the cylinders and the block with oil. On the farm we have 55 gallon drums of used motor oil from the tractors and semi's.
Does it have original six or what engine?,hell 20 quarts of oil is alot,if the sludge was that bad,you need to at least pull the pan and valve cover and see how bad it is or you are going to have problems down the road,did it have any oil pressure when you did run it.? You must have one bigass oil drain pan.
I used to put in a quart of atf to clear it out about 100 miles before an oil change. (lots of detergent in atf) If it is that bad I would fuush it a couple of times and change again after a week or so.
The advice I was given was to keep changing it. (more often) The other was use 4 qts of oil and 1 qt of trans. fluid. and keep changing it (more often)
I'm with Gerrys. Change the oil, put a quart of ATF in with the new oil and drive it a hundred miles or so then change it. Buy the cheapest wal mart or whatever oil and do this several times.
I've heard of that too, be interesting to try to start it without checking the stick first! I would toss in a quart of MM oil, drive it normal for a few days and drop the oil. You will probably get rid of most of the sludge this way, I wouldn't try anything too drastic unless you plan to rebuild it, soon. Bob
Pull the pan and clean it and the oil pump screen. You start breaking that sludge loose with atf and other detergents you might stop up the intake screen and starve the bearings. OldWolf
May sound dumb but a buddy of mine had a service station and would drain all the oil, fill to full mark on dip stick with kerosene and run the car just until the heads got warm, then drain and fill with cheap oil, run again till it got warm, drain and fill with good oil, changing filter each time. Really cleans an engine out.
i put half diesel and half oil and rev it up once then drain, then run some cheap oil thru it then change it again with good oil. check for good oil flow cause of screen.
has good pressure 30 when cold 15 warm,runs good no unusual noises,i think im going to pull the pan,i had the valve cover off ,didnt look that bad ,i used 2 pans when drining it ,had a little water not much .i had drained the oil before i started it .
DUMP A QT OF TRANNY FLUID in it today . drive it around sat.and sun. maybe change it next week. and pull pan
I would not dump anything into my engine than engine oil. If you have a sludge problem, use Heavy Duty Engine Oil (HDEO) and change it whenever it starts to thicken up. HDEOs have a strong detergent/dispersant additive package that is designed to keep engines clean. See the Corvair Oil article (Bottom Line Recommendation 10, p 17) for more information. Using tranny oil means that you've added a low-viscosity lubricant with absolutely no additive protection. If you really want to use an engine flush, you could use an ester-based engine oil (like Redline) or use slow-acting additives like Auto-Rx or LC20.
Does anyone know is it possible to pull the oil pan off a 1953 Mercury 255 flathead, with the engine in the car?
Yes, it is...............although it may be necessary to raise the engine in front a bit...........unbolt the engine mounts...........tie rods may need to be dropped. Ray
I'm sorry, but I must disagree with those who recommend putting ANYTHING in the engine to flush it, most especially diesel fuel, ATF etc..........you have too much sludge in the oil pan.............the ONLY suitable remedy is to pull the pan, clean it out, and reinstall it. The other methods likely will do far more damage than than whatever benefit is suggested.........loosening up all that contaminent in the pan and circulating it through the oil system will be hard on the internal parts but especially the bearings. It was common in the 50's and early 60's that engines were operated on non-detergent oil. If higher mileage engines were switched to the detergent oils they usually soon needed overhaul. Loosening up the carbon deposits with detergents was the ticket to premature engine work. It happened to my Father's '53 Merc. Ray
I agree if you want your engine to last. Use engine oil only run it for a short time maybe a half hour the first time change it then longer each time as the oil looks better. Change the filter EVERY time. Pulling your pan is the best option. IF you decide to put ATF in then do not run it for very long. Whatever you do make sure you have a REAL oil pressure gauge on there!
yea pull the pan. its more work, but you'll be happy once you have the oil pan all clean. and maybe change the oil pump to a new one? who knows how much sludge is up in there? is should be easy once the pan is off. just my 2 cents
Drain the oil out of it fill it up with atf let it idle for about 5 to 10 minutes and drain it then fill it back up with your favorite flavor of oil. it will be clean as a whistle. I've done this many times and it works wonders.
You need to pull the pan. Gravity works down, and eventually most crap in the engine winds up in the pan. Most pans I've pulled off of old engines had a clean spot around where the pic up was, and the rest of the pan ws filled with sludge. Once the majority of the crap has been removed from the engine by cleaning the pan, using a quart of Rislone with every oil/filter change will gently dissolve most of the varnish that remains. Unless the engine is pulled, stripped, and hot tanked or baked/jet washed, that's probably your best alternative...but you have to clean the sludge out of the pan, or you'll just be recurculating newly dissolved crap through the engine. And that will sure as hell wipe out your bearings in no time...
Great advice. Have had more than one modern car in our shop that died due to oil pump pick-up screen being clogged solid with sludge crap. Take off the pan clean the pick-up and tube. Take off the valve cover and clean it to.
Years ago in high school I worked at a gas station (they were still called that in those days) with a guy who had a 57 Ford with a badly sludged Y block in it. Our mechanic talked him into pulling the intake, valve covers and pan and blasting it with the big power washer that we used to wash cars. He did that, then dried everything with compressed air, oiled it all up, put everything back and away he went. It seemed to work, but I'm guessing the best part of all this was cleaning out the oil pump pickup and the pan. I agree that pulling your pan is probably the solution, not the easiest maybe, but the most successful in the long run.
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