I was wondering if you could shed some light on something I just noticed today. I have 3 old core LS engines sitting at my shop. One of them is a 4.8L engine that we pulled out of my sons truck as we upgraded to a 5.3L engine. His old 4.8 had 274K miles on it when we pulled it. No issues with it at all except it was burning through a quart of oil every 1000-1500 miles. Noticeable blue smoke on first start up in the morning. Today I pulled both valve covers and immediately I noticed something was off. The drivers side of the engine looks like it was being starved for oil. The rockers on that side are DISGUSTING with tons of baked on carbon, and crystalized oil deposits. Even the pushrods, and the heads themselves where the pushrods come up through them look like it is discolored from over-heating, or just baked on oil. The passengers side=looks brand new! There is NO carbon build up on any of the valve train components on the passenger side of the engine. I pulled a rocker, and then a pushrod and ran it through my fingers and there is NO build up of any kind on ANYTHING on the passenger side of the engine. If I took a picture of both sides of the engine you would think I was pulling a prank. It does not seem possible that one side of the engine could look so bad, and the other side so clean. All 8 rockers on the drivers side (bad side) are DESTROYED where the push rod rides in the cup. The cups are wallowed out and the oil feed hole is starting to get damaged by the push rod tip.

What in the world could explain the drivers side of the motor being starved for oil?????????

I have a 2nd 5.3L core engine here and I pulled the valve covers off of it and find THE EXACT SAME THING! What can I do to insure that my 6.0L build gets the oil that it needs to the drivers side of the head to prevent this? Has anyone else noticed this before? It worries me that there is such a stark contrast between the two banks of the engine. I thought the oil was fed up through the push rods to the valve train on top of the head. What could explain 1 side of the engine starving for oil, and the other side looking like a brand new engine?

 

Posted twice??

 

Every motor I've pulled apart looks this way that's probably 10-12 ls motors and they all are darker on one side and very clean on the other. I think it's something to do with the factory pcv system.

 

Same. I built a 5.3 for my nephew last year, and It was the same way. I thought that it had had a head replaced on one side, along with rockers, push rods, etc...
This is interesting, to say the least.

 

Funny this came up because 40 years ago while working on pickup trucks at a Chevy dealer I came across the exact same issue. Trucks had 75k or so on them and came for smoking issues. One head was like new.........the other head was so blocked up it was forcing oil past the valve guides. I can't remember what I found unfortunately, I'd check the water passages and head gaskets water holes for blockage. I think it was a blocked head gasket problem but I'm not 100% sure cause my memory is terrible.