Seafoam before and after pics with the valve cover off.

[pwrtripls1]

I bought the car with 116,000 miles and it ran good but used oil. So I switched to royal purple and ran some seafoam in the gas and into the intake, along with redoing the crank vent. I pulled the valve cover and it was NASTY. The worst buildup I've ever seen. I cleaned it out with a plastic spoon like thing, and there was so much. Well 20,000 miles later with royal purple 15/40 (I like the gallon jug) I can run a full 6000 miles and only be down about a qt. of oil.

So today I was bored and wanted to see what it looked like after running RP for 20k more miles since I've pulled the valve cover. It looks alot cleaner but still not great. So I took a before pic and I'm running seafoam in the crank case right now. I'll pull the cover again when I'm done running it and take pics again. Hopefully this gets some more gunk out of there.

Pics coming soon......

[oak]

Looking forward to the pics. Hopefully you have pics from the first pull when it was real nasty.

[Uzzy]

Especially since you promised them in the title!

[CND_SC1]

Dom't run it too long, it does dilute the oil. Might be a bit safer since you're using the 15W40 but still, you have to assume if a solvent is good enough to disloge and liquify the sludge & varnish, it must also water down the oil to some degree and weaken your overnight film on the bearings? I really think it'll do it's work within the first 200 miles (preferably long drives) and then it's best to drain it all out before it begins to reincorporate.

[pwrtripls1]

OK, here are the before seafoam pics....

[pwrtripls1]

Here are the after pics. I dumped in a whole bottle of seafoam and let it idle at 2000rpms for an hour. There is a deffinate visual difference. I may repeat this process the last hundred miles of this oil change and just drive it around. Im sure the difference will be huge then...... So far the idle is slightly smoother but not much difference. I guess mostly its for my piece of mind.

[Pitcher]

AWESOME PICS!!

I bet my neglected Satty looks as bad as what you originally found.

Did a few changes of MMO. In goes the Seafoam...!

[DonP]

Maybe try a couple treatment cycles with AutoRX. Many folks like it for cleaning sludge from an engine, and it is not a harsh solvent.

[Cheyne]

+1^^^ on the Auto Rx. Those before pictures are pretty nasty.

[gibvel]

Wow, quite the difference in before and after. Did you say that the before pictures were even after you did the first RP change and Seafoam addition. Wonder what it looked like before you did that...

Just curious as to how much of the oil burning could have been due to switching to the 15/40 instead of 5/30. How much oil was it using before you switched?

[93SC2'in]

wow those before pictures look like you where running mud instead of oil..

just be sure to change your oil because now all that crud is suspended in it

[andy_95sl2]

Holy crud! That's probably the dirtiest engine I have ever seen! Here's a pic of the cylinder head in my 2nd saturn. The previous owner never changed the oil in 3 years, and it didn't look that bad!

[Reloader]

Hope you had a good oil filter on to catch all that crud that was circulating through your lube system

[OnDaGround]

Originally Posted by andy_95sl2

Holy crud! That's probably the dirtiest engine I have ever seen! Here's a pic of the cylinder head in my 2nd saturn. The previous owner never changed the oil in 3 years, and it didn't look that bad!

Well we can't all have clean engines, can we?

[1996SL11.9L]

I purchased my Saturn in September, it used about 2 qt per oil change.

I love the rotella t 5w40 synthetic but didn't want the zinc that diesel oils have fouling my cat, so I did some searching and found the Pennzoil's Platinum brand is susposta use the same base stock as the rotella and started using it. It also advertises it ability to remove sludge, bla..bla..bla...

I took care of the valve cover leak in the beginning of the Pennzoil oil, and remember what it looked like under there.

On the second oil change I am now 2000 miles into the oil and haven't needed to add any oil yet....it is only down 1/8 below the full mark. I've been adding oil when it gets halfway to the add mark.

[pwrtripls1]

Originally Posted by gibvel

Wow, quite the difference in before and after. Did you say that the before pictures were even after you did the first RP change and Seafoam addition. Wonder what it looked like before you did that...

Just curious as to how much of the oil burning could have been due to switching to the 15/40 instead of 5/30. How much oil was it using before you switched?

I was using about 1qt of Penzoil 10/40 every 600-800 miles. When I switched to RP and redid the crank vent and ditched the PCV I was using 1qt about every 1500 miles. Then with cleaning the intake and combustion chambers with seafoam I got around 3-4k miles per 1qt lost. After a few oil changes with the RP I was getting the full 6k miles and may loose about 1/2 a qt. Which I put 4qts in (gallon jug) and at 6k miles the oil level is right on the full mark. (3.5qt)

The before seafoam pic is after running RP for 20k+ miles and having dug out as much chunky sludge as I could with a plastic spoon. You would not believe the way it looked the first time I took the cover off!!! Whats amazing is the outside of the motor and trans are the CLEANEST I've ever seen at 137k miles. Not one leak or oil seapage anywhere, it looks nearly new on the outside! LOL

The trans also shifts ALOT smoother with the RP Max ATF in it. (5 speed)

[Ghettoracer]

Ewwwww....I'd drain the oil and run some motor flush through that for 5-10 minutes with a little Seafoam in the motor flush and a new filter. Then do your synthetic oil change with a K&N filter. Then check look at everything again. I never seen that much build up even on the rockers and springs like that before.

[1996SL11.9L]

For my SOHC motor when I looked under the valve cover I had what looked like cokeing on the valve train in the area from #1 to #2 cylinder and clean metal (no crunchies) for #3 and #4. There was slight light brown staining. (varnish?)

The crunchies wern't bad just there.......

[pwrtripls1]

Originally Posted by Ghettoracer

Ewwwww....I'd drain the oil and run some motor flush through that for 5-10 minutes with a little Seafoam in the motor flush and a new filter. Then do your synthetic oil change with a K&N filter. Then check look at everything again. I never seen that much build up even on the rockers and springs like that before.

I only run either Mobil1 filters or Wix. Purolator Pure One is also a great filter but they dont carry them where I usualy shop. (Orielly's) I have several other vehicles, 5 4wheelers, go cart, lawn mower, 20kw backup generator, 5.5hp pressure washer, and a few other toys and I run RP 15/40 and Wix filters on everything. Unless Mobil1 makes a filter for it.

Whats bad is I have a 92' Dodge D250 with 438,000 miles that I have turned into my drag truck and the engine looks perfectly clean and new inside. The cylinders even still have the crosshatch clearly visible!!!

[mikeczipri]

When you ran the Seafoam into the PCV valve, did you just remove the valve itself and pour the seafoam into the hole where it goes, or into that hose that it connects to?

Sorry if thats a stupid question, I am planning on doing the seafoam thing at my next oil change so I just wanna make sure I do it right. Thanks!