Valve covers nasty

265,000 miles and I found this. Anyone see a need to clean the covers? There's a ton of grit baked into the head beneath the oil fill tube.

You can see where I wiped it some with a shop towel.

 

Lack of consistent oil changes and lots of short trips im betting.

 

I don’t see a picture of the valve covers?
But it wouldn’t hurt to give them a good scrub down before putting them back on.

How often have you been changing the oil?

 

Previous owner had a 7 mi round trip commute.

I cleaned the valve covers and inlet tube. Much nastiness removed. I'm going to do cams when I install the supercharger, might clean the heads then.

 

Every 4ish months, good filters and synthetic oil. Previous owner used Dino oil and acted like you could put dog shit in the motor and expect it to run forever.

I'm going to clean the VVTI filters before putting it all together today.

 

Be sure to put some RTV where the timing cover meets cylinder head.
2 spots on both heads. See link below for details and specs.
https://www.tacomaworld.com/threads/05-tacoma-4-0l-valve-cover-gasket-replacement.649648/#post-22571043

 

Actually looks pretty good for all those miles.

 

Would a motor flush help with that?

 

Doesn't look too terribly bad for the mileage, sure if it was maintained better it would be cleaner but I wouldn't be terribly concerned about it. Working at an automotive shop I see much worse buildup than that all the time, many people don't pay any attention at all to the oil change sticker or even the reminder message on the dash.

 

Just thought about it, you may want to check the reluctor on the cam phaser while your under there. They are known to develop fatigue cracks and eventually break on high mile 4.0s causing cam sensor codes and/or driveability problems.

 

yep. Humans can probably survive on dogfood too but never known anyone with a diet of it.

IDK man I did a few. A flush, short OCI maybe, or flush towards the end of an OCI prior to drain. Is that what made my internals look new at high miles? Or the fact I follow OCI procedure - that I don't know. Never did any sort of before/after looking. Only had the covers off once to reseal.

 

Bg epr is a great engine flush, might help a bit to clean things up in there, but might also dislodge pieces of buildup and clog vvti screens at that kind of mileage. Looks good for 265k

 

I figured I should order new vvti filters anyway, the rain came early so I didn't bother to pull them out and flush them yet.

I walked into my friends shop today and he had several packs on the shelf, I'll try the bg epr before the next oil change.