Help Camshaft Casing filled with Baked oil Sledge

IF you put a CLEANEr in your engine--The PICK UP SCREEN will get clogged.
From past experience- NEVER - Put in an engine cleaner--It clogges the pick up screen in the oil pan--FOR YEARS TO COME.Loose particles will be dislodged and fall into the oil pan--IN THe FUTURE.
High detergent(REGULAR) oil is the best way to clean it--change when it gets dirty.

 

DID THEY EVER CHANGE THE OIL!!!!!!??????

 

So more good news. I hooked up a mechanical gauge to check the oil pressure and the needle didn't even wiggle. So i have NO oil pressure.

I'm going to take off the oil pan clean the pick up and see if that helps if not i'm going to replace the oil pump and then if that doesn't work then it'll be new engine or trade it time.

Initially i didn't feel comfortable dropping the oil pan but toyota wanted around $1000 to do it so i guess i'll learn.

 

I meant if you have to clean around the cams. Plug the oil return drain while your cleaning it so no particles fall into the oil pan.

 

Can you get the pan off without dropping the front diff?

 

Sure doesn't look like it. In all the searching I've done it looks like it's a must do unless you pull the engine.

I'm just hoping that someone will know some tricks like you don't have to fully remove the steering arms or something like that.

Cuz in the manual it says remove steering arms see page ##. But I'd like to know if i can skip some steps because i just want to drop the diff not remove the arms.

 

I should probably start a new thread about the oil pan thanks for your help so far guys.

I'll post more pictures when I'm not up to my elbows in the truck.

 

Hey Guys,
thanks for all the help dropping the pan was the way to go.

Cleaned out the pan reloaded some new oil and i've got all kinds of oil pressure. 15psi at idle and max out at 55 psi (warm engine)

So the pan was full of clumps of the baked on junk and what happened as far as my buddy and i figured is that; once the oil pump stated it sucked all the junk into the screen the particles didn't get through but being mashed up against the screen made is so oil couldn't get through the pump.

The screen was actually dented inwards from this so once we cleaned all the junk out of the pan and cleaned every thing we could see. We loaded in the new oil and bam oil pressure. I haven't driven it much since then only about 100 miles because i need to get an alignment because we installed my new shocks into the truck. And i don't want to drive it around too much before it's aligned.

So the plan for now is to run moble for mileage vehicles with 1/2 a can of sea foam for 500 miles oil change see what it looks like then if it looks good i'll run highmilage for 1500 miles if not i'll run the other 1/2 of sea foam on another 500 mile interval. If it still good after the 1500 mile test i'll go back to full synthetic and do a 3000 mile change and that will probably be my interval for oil changes. After my 3rd/4th oil change i'll pop off the valve covers and see how the cams look.

I'll post after the 500 mile change.

I found a great post similar to what i did (found it once i was mid way through the process) here: My oil pan area looked identical to his photos.

http://www.yotatech.com/f2/oil-sludge-monster-attacks-167704/index3.html

 

I had a '98 Lexus RX300 with this problem. The original and previous owner didn't change their oil until 20,000 miles, and it's been a slowing growing problem over the next 6 years. Once the engine hit 70,000 the head was so full of this thick junk that the cams siezed. Lexus was nice enough to replace the entire engine under warranty for me. I got lucky. I don't have any recommendations on how to fix this, but that thick crap is inside your oil pan and crank too. Good luck.

 

Any updates?

 

Ok so some updates.

So far since cleaning the oil pan and fixing the low oil pressure I've put ~1500 miles on the engine. In that time i've changed my oil twice I ran 1/2 a can of seafoam in the engine for ~300 miles then changed that oil. The oil was really dark and had many suspend particles in it. I also cut open the oil filter the first picture is the oil filter after 300 miles w/seafoam.

I ran the truck with new oil and without seafoam for 600 miles then did another oil change. I did this because i think i had some leaking due to the seafoam making the oil thinner and i was going on a 600 mile one way trip so i wanted to eliminate a leak if i could. The oil at the 600 mile mark did still have alot of particles suspended and was very dark too however not as bad as the 300 mile oil.

Second picture is the oil filter from the 600 mile interval.

I'm quite happy with it's performance over the 600 mile trip i didn't appear to be losing any oil and over all the engine is getting cleaner.

After this trip i think the old girl is out of the intensive care unit. Next oil change will be at 1000 miles i'm going to add the other half of the can of seafoam for the last 200 miles or so. If not the next oil change then the one after i will check my pside valve cover to see if there's been an improvement.

 

The 300 mile filter picture didn't really capture how dirty it was here are 2 better pictures

 

Good to see she's getting better. Nice job.

 

Yeah that is lucky. I cleaned the heads and the oil pan and right now i'm running short interval oil changes and using some cleaners to clear it away from other parts of the engine not easily accessible.
I have been seeing some improvement with the oil that's been coming out.
So time will tell if this approach will work or not. I'm in a fortunate position somewhat because the engine didn't seize so i may have been able to reverse it before it became a catastrophic engine failure.

 

Yea I agree you lucked out! +1 for pictures the whole time