We knew we bought a project, but..... It's a 97 Disco with 107,000 and it seemed to run fine. It had a head gasket coolant leak on the front of the engine on the driver's side so it was time to pull the heads and re-gasket. When we finally got to the rocker arm covers, I could spin the bolts without a ratchet - hence the oil leaks - so we found this when we pulled the covers (a picture's worth a thousand words):



[IMG]local://upfiles/6139/759C9C6B6B8E4717A8A5D35388D00335.jpg[/IMG]

 

very little oil changes on that motor,I'm sure the pick up tube in the oil pan is clogged too

 

Looks like an old Chevette I bought for $100.....ouch

 

I had a 76 Mercury I bought in high school (Ford 302)for $400 that looked at least that bad. It took 2 days, a bushel of rags and degreaser to clean that thing up. I agree with sideburns- probably zero oil changes on that engine in at least 50K at some point in its life. It breaks the heart.

If you do clean it completely, make sure you re-oil the camshaft, lifters, rockers and pushrods to prevent an oilless start on those items. Chances are the bottom end is just as bad. If you have the time and access, pulling the pan to clean up the oil screen is a good idea.

Dave

 

My aunt had a mid 80's Buick Regal 3.8 V6 that I took apart and found a similar story. I was able to grab solid hard lumps (handfuls)of crud out of the intake valley. I've heard Penzoil is bad for doing this if not changed frequently. I had a friend that worked at a Toyota dealer and he said their 3.0-3.4L V6's are bad for this if the oil changes are neglected and seems to be more prevelant with Penzoil.

 

Good luck cleaning it out, once it is back together and as clean as you can get it, I would still do a full ATF flush to lossen up the stuff you weren't able to get to.
Good luck with the project.

 

Believe it or not I did an ATF flush before I started on the engine. The fluid didn't look too bad when it came out. It's so plugged up that it probably didn't have much chance in 20 minutes to do much cleaning. Just got the heads back from my local shop. They did a great job. One exhaust valve was a little scored so I replaced the valve and guide, but other than that it was in good shape.

I wasn't sure I was going to be able to break the head bolts loose. I broke two sockets with my 1/2" breaker bar and rounded off one of the bolt heads when the socket broke. If I ever have to do one again, I'm going to use an impact socket to begin with. I drilled the center of the bolt out to reduce the tension and was able to break it loose with one of the Irwin removal tools. Got lucky. Should I put something on the new bolts - like antisieze - when I put it back together? The dissimilar metals (aluminum head and steel bolt) may have made them so hard to break loose.

 

take some step by step photo's if you get a change, I think we'd like to see the progress with you. Best of luck.

-Ug

 

I'm kind of partial to anti seize on just about everything, especially on steel bolts into aluminum. I used to live in a place where salt was used on the roads, makes life so much easier if the chassis components boltsare put together with anti seize. I like the copper colored stuff they sell in O'Reily's myself, but the aluminum stuff seems to work OK too, but doesn't seem to last as long. Just be careful you don't get the threads dirty prior to installing, "grease" attracts dirt and it will affect your torque readings on the cyl head.

 

use motor oil on the head bolt threads,torque to 15lbs mark bolts then do a 90 degree turn follwed by another 90 degree turn