Hey guys, i'll get pics up later, but I yanked my intake yesterday to change out the gasket and holy hell.... I discovered the nastiest mess of sludge i've ever seen... I don't have much faith in the bottem end anymore.

It was pretty clean under the valve covers but wow... under the intake was nasty.

 

bummer. scrap it all out. make sure its not affecting the drainback. only thing you can do. when you get it back together, use that engine flush stuff. put it in, run the car for like 10 min.s, then drain it out. that stuff works really good.

 

Thats what you get with a 3200 F-body

Just Like for 5500.00 you get a minty fresh 97 sixspeed.

that blows the rear end on the way home, One way or the other - what you save on buying the car, will be re-inserted when the truth is unearthed over the months to come.

 

too bad most people dont realize that fact. lots of people balked at my car for the price I was asking last year, but never think twice that when you buy a cheap car, you'll be dumping tons of money into REPAIRS that dont do anything for performance when my car already had all that done.

anyways, Im sure both of your cars will be fine just keep them up. something breaks, fix it and move on, right?

chris

 

Yeah, I bought a 3200 dollar f-body because that was all I had to work with.

We did just that, scraped the sludge as best we could, cleaned up what we could, put it back together, flushed it, and changed the oil.

Seems smoother with more power. The downside is after driving home on the highway when I came to a stop I lost most of my oil pressure. It sits almost halfway between the bottem and the first tick.
Unfortunately it is enough to get the check gauges light to come on. I'm pretty sure the bottem end is on its last leg if not already shot.

Pressure does come up to roughly 40 under heavy acceleration and 20ish cruising though..

What do you guys think?

 

What oil are you using? Steven

 

Royal Purple 5w30

 

A motor with that many miles you should be running something thicker.5W-30 is for a tight motor with low miles.10w-30 woulb be ok and in the summer 10w-40 would be fine.You should even see a pressure increase as well. Steven

 

I agree, except thinner oil is better for cold temps. course, its not really that cold out today though, I would go 10w30 also, and even 10/50 in the summer.
as for the oil pressure's your seeing, it could last you a while yet, but could also go tomorrow. thats def. an indication of the bearings being worn down. and Im guessing the only reason the oil press. changed after you did the flush, is cause the person you bought it from knew it had low oil press., and put in some additives to make the oil thicker so you wo uldnt see the low oil press. when you looked at it. thats another reason engines get gummed up like that. people putting in additives like that. Im not talkinga bout like slick 50, Im talking about like stop leak and oil burning additives.

 

Thats very rough looking, sorry about the luck.

But, when something breaks, its just another opportunity to make it go faster

It blew when My rear end went, Not even an hour after purchasing it, I even considered driving to his house, and utterly smashing his ***, But in the end, after all his considerable lies, I just paid for the repairs and moved forward.

Not saying the previous owner of your car had any knowlege, just recommending repairing, and moving on.

 

Yep, I know how it goes. My old 96 lost a rear end, 2 trans, and finally the engine in 10 months...
I guess my racing it had alot to do with that... it was my daily driver and saw too much track time after being beat on and poorly maintained before I got it. Unfortunately I couldn't keep it when I left for college.

 

Changing from 5w-30 to 10w-30 will not help warm oil pressure. The 5w and 10w are the oils viscosity when stone cold. The 30 is the viscosity when heated up to running temps.
I'd try 10w-40 and see how that works.

 

Get that bull**** out of your engine. First off running synthetic in a high mileage LT1 is absurd, second Royal Purple is absolute garbage in the spectrum of things. It sheets off metal surfaces WAY too fast, and offers little to no protection at high RPM because of this.

 

looks like the first lt1 I bought 8 years ago. I pulled off the valve covers because of a loose rocker.

It was all sludged up so I cleaned it the best I could.

After i cleaned it ran better but the oil pressure droped just like you stated.

3 weeks later I got a rod knock and had to buy a new motor.

Good luck, but I think she is done now that you cleaned it. Cleaning it can get that **** stuck and not allow good oil pressure.

If I had to do it again, I would if tore down the entire motor and went through all the sludge to avoid a rebuild.

 

if you took off the oil pan, you could clean out the oil pump pickup to make sure none of that gunk you scrapped off ended up blocking the pickup screen. that would be the most probable way what you did could have a negative effect on the future life of the engine. other then that, you could have rinsed out gunk that was actually keeping the crank/rods in place and taking up any play in the bearings. so now the play would tear up the rest of the bearing quick. thats a possible scenario too.