This is why you should regularly change your oil!

My best friend bought a 97 4runner about six years ago, when the truck was around 160k. The previous owner never did any maintainence work on the truck, including oil changes. Robert faithfully did oil changes on the truck, and took very good care of it. The truck is now at 237k, and still runs strong. It recently developed a pretty serious valve cover leak, so we decided to go ahead and change the valve cover on that side yesterday, after doing the starter on the truck, and this is what we found:

Note all of the sludge, a mixture of oil, dirt, and God knows what else that coats everything. I cleaned the valve cover itself off before we put the new valve cover gasket on, and the sludge had hardened and left a coating on everything, about a half-inch thick in most spots. Even though the truck still runs strong, the condition inside it is rather deplorable, and without a doubt, has taken a lot of life off this truck. If the previous owner had kept up on oil changes, this truck might have gotten to 300k or more before having to be overhauled- but now, upon seeing this, it will be done sooner rather than later. We would rather rebuild it now than to wait until something catastrophic happens.
So anyways, always remember to change your oil- keep your vehicle going as long as you can, unless you've got tons of money to throw at it when your lack of maintenance catches up with you!

 

I've seen worse, hope you got most of that out of there!
Sounds like a mess, back in the day we'd add some ATF, or a little diesel fuel, run for a while(short drive) and do a hot oil change...

 

Holy sheet, good luck with the goop man. looks about as bad as my buddies that he never did any work for 5 years on a lumina

 

Unless you have a compression test (including leakdown) and an oil analysis from a place like Blackstone that says otherwise, making a decision for an overhaul of this based on what you see under the valve cover, on a good running motor, would be foolish.

At least do some more testing before spending that kind of money. As Old School says, I've seen worse. And I've cleaned up worse, and I've had worse run fine for a long long time.

Hey, this is a post of encouragement!

 

Oh yes, I've seen worse as well, but this time I decided to take a picture and put it up here for the benefit of others. My truck was actually worse than this one when I got it- definitely glad I rebuilt mine! We got out what we could, and ended up doing the diesel trick with it. Little diesel never hurt anything if you do it right.

 

That should help!

 

I have a neighbor who teases me constantly about my insistence on regular (6000 Mi.) oil changes and maintenance on my truck.
Of course, the last time someone did an oil change on HER truck, the oil literally had to be scraped out of the oil pan with a putty knife! I know my Taco will last longer then ANYTHING she drives, barring accidents, as she was gone through 5 vehicles in the last 5 years due to NO maintenance. .

 

Oh, definitely! We won't be tearing it down right away. We'll definitely be running more tests, but seeing this certainly makes you lean towards wanting to do the overhaul- and without a doubt, has taken some life off this engine.

 

Your neighbor sounds a lot like my sister. I showed her this picture and she looked at me like "I don't really care, bye." She's been through four vehicles in the past four years, and I'm still driving my 20 year old Tacoma with little/no issues.