Low oil pressure causes
TECH Senior Member
Joined: Jun 2016
Posts: 22,292
Likes: 3,616
From: Central Cal.
Boy, Pooter, that brought back memories!
I too still remember avoiding Pennz like the plague for its bad rep for causing sludge.
We always heard it was the paraffin based crude they used. This was back in the 70's. I'm glad they cleaned up their act!
I too still remember avoiding Pennz like the plague for its bad rep for causing sludge.
We always heard it was the paraffin based crude they used. This was back in the 70's. I'm glad they cleaned up their act!
I'm not sure I understand, what do you mean on thought on protection vs sludge build up.
Here's one thing I can add. Way back in the day of the dinosaur when I started in the automotive field (1998) sludge was much more common, and particularly bad with pennzoil. We saw it a lot even on our regular customers car. So the sludge can in some cases be due to the oil itself. If I recall correctly it was wax or parrafin.. I dunno there was an explanation and it was the reason pennzoil reformulated, which if you follow any testing pennzoil consistently tests up there with the best of oils there are.. sorry got sidetracked cause I'm a pennzoil nutswinger now.
Anyway, even back in the day the sludged up motors were lubed and in good shape, but they had cake all through them.
Here's one thing I can add. Way back in the day of the dinosaur when I started in the automotive field (1998) sludge was much more common, and particularly bad with pennzoil. We saw it a lot even on our regular customers car. So the sludge can in some cases be due to the oil itself. If I recall correctly it was wax or parrafin.. I dunno there was an explanation and it was the reason pennzoil reformulated, which if you follow any testing pennzoil consistently tests up there with the best of oils there are.. sorry got sidetracked cause I'm a pennzoil nutswinger now.
Anyway, even back in the day the sludged up motors were lubed and in good shape, but they had cake all through them.
Pooter, I was eluding to a discussion about oil protection vs. sludge build up. A lot of guys would see the sludge build up and quickly throw the oil used under the bus, despite the fact that the oil did its job very well by the looks of the bearings and skirts. I dunno...just trying to see a little tech discussion on the subject. Your a tech...I bet you see all kinds of nasty, under valve covers?
I have to agree man, the motors I have seen with all the buildup, were still running and healthy. Personally I don't want all that crap in my engine, but to your point, it didn't appear to be hurting it.
Edit: I saw a lot of motors that seemed plenty healthy with buildup in them, but i've also had a few motors that looked that way that were getting an engine job.. I will say that I've seen quite a few sludged up where the sludge wasn't dark black and crystallized and the bad engines were more caked with hardened crust than goo.
Man, these days, I don't see sludge/goo buildup anymore. That seems to have disappeared. What I do see is crusty flaky stuff in engines that don't get frequent oil changes as they should.
For quick reference and again to nut swing pennzoil. This is a pic from my 2004 sierra, this is 190k miles on the original engine. I bought the truck with 80k on it and ran pennzoil every change.
The interesting thing was (flame suit on) I ran the oil 7-10k miles per change on this one. (I normally change oil way sooner but this truck spent a lot of time on the highway and had no modifications and never towed anything)
Thread Starter
Joined: Feb 2015
Posts: 5,997
Likes: 2,286
From: Conroe, Texas
Now that;s what you'd expect to see when you pull a valve cover on well maintained engine. Obviously the previous owner of this vehicle either failed to change the oil enough and probably used some of the cheapest oil money could buy.
I felt kinda bad about running the oil that long but around the time I got the truck most manufacturers had moved to 10k oil change interval recommendations and even bmw had gone to 15 so I figured if I ran the best oil it would be okay.
I didn't expect it to look bad, but I didn't expect it to be that good. But I do keep an eye on the oil coloring as the miles pass by each oil change and I don't let it get too nasty, and usually I peek in the valve cover and have a look at the cylinder head inside periodically but can't really do that with the LS oil filler so I wasn't sure what to expect.
My current truck's head looks the same way and I have all the service records on it from before I bought it. It got mobil 1 every oil change and the guy went 8-12k miles on oil changes. I was little nervous about it but the engine looked so clean inside I bought it anyway. Now i'm doing around 6k changes on this truck with pennzoil platinum.
