Will running synthetic (Rotella T6) for the rest of the life of the truck clean up the staining or is that a permanent feature of the motor now?

 

Thats a good question and i dont know the answer. I would guess that the staining will stay there unless you rebuilt the engine and had it hot tanked in the process. What you have doesnt look bad at all. Some engines are completely full of sludge...you dont look to have any sludge.

 

There was some stuff I used....I think it was called motor flush...

 

Nope, no sludge. What causes sludge?

 

Extreme carbon buildup mixed with oil. It gets thick enough to never make its way back to the pan and through the filter. Typically found in places like the valve covers where splash lubrication is draining back to the pan.

 

Mine was way worse (see below). I called the reps (Eric & Dave) at Atlantic British to try and get some guidance on how to handle mine. They both stressed to me NOT to use motor flush in these engines. The best choice I had was to remove the rockers and clean them that way.

With that being said, I’ve had two of my more mechanically inclined friends suggest I run a can of seafoam with a cheap filter and oil for a bit then redrain and add the good oil and filter after I’ve pulled the rockers, cleaned everything and put it back together.

Does anyone have any better ideas/lessons learned from a similar experience?

 

Man that is ugly, there are all kinds of shadetree fixes a liter of diesel, atf and other things.

My suggestion is a good really hi detergent oil and about 5 cheap oil filters, do a complete oil change add a cheap filter drive maybe 50 miles tops, you need to get up to operating temp for a bit. Change the filter then another 100, constantly check the oil condition.
After 200 - 250 miles pop the valve covers and see if there is any improvement.

RISKS - oil pickup gets clogged, or fine oil passages get blocked doing damage to the main or conrod bearings sam e with the seafoam

But honestly with that much crap on the top end, I would drop the pan and pull the upper and lower intake and see how bad it really is. My bet is bad really bad, but then you can decide how far to go.
With all that off you can clean the pan,pull the rockers clean them up, pull the lifters and clean them and the push rods and inspect the camshaft.
Remove and thoroughly clean the oil pickup

Put it back together, run an mid range oil filter and good detergent oil for 50 or 75 miles swap the filter and try the seafoam. After the clean up you have removed enough crap you should pretty safe.
Then after the seafoam do short run oil changes - 1000 miles everything looks good, go up to 1500 and then back to normal.

 

Thanks for the advice! I’ll go this route and see how bad it is when I pull the pan and take look at the pickup. I also went ahead and got some BG EPR & MOA to run through it based on a suggestion from yet another friend.

I’ll let you all known how it goes once I get there.

 

Mine were in about the same condition as your pics at the beginning of the thread when I did my HG job this past summer. I placed everything in a cheap, large plastic bin from Wallyworld, poured in a 5gal container of degreaser, let things soak for a bit, then used a few tooth brushes and a kitchen scrubbing brush and got everything down to bare metal without too much elbow grease. I had a lot more build up on the valve covers themselves. The valve covers wear also a little weather worn, so I used the opportunity to give them a spray with engine enamel to spruce them up.

Like everyone has said, make sure you take the time to clean out the oil passages.

 

Spent the day cleaning the driver side rocker and put the passenger one in the solvent take to soak overnight.

Lesson learned: Ensure the rocker shaft identification groove is positioned at 1 o’clock and the push rod locations of the rocker are to the right during reassembly. I screwed this up and had to take it all back apart to position it correctly, potentially screwing up the naturally wear points on the shaft. Additionally, check the push rod oiling holes in the rocker itself. Half of mine were clogged shut. Took a dental tool to the inside to loosen the gunk then sprayed it through with brake cleaner.