Have you ever recovered or restored an engine where the oil had turned into lumps?

[rcx132]

This is mainly a curiosity question.

I had to buy a few used engines on ebay before I found a decent one for my restoration. The one I opened up yesterday had very black oil which fell out the drain plug in lumps. The gauze on the oil pickup had that pushed in shape showing it was sucking against a lot of resistance.

A part of me is curious whether the thing will run again, I have a spare cut off chassis where I mount the engines for test starting. Another part of me is even more curious and wants to take it apart and see what sort of damage or wear there is.

What are your experiences? Is such an engine recoverable or restorable?

 

[8ob]

In days of old diesel engine oils wouldn't mix with petrol engine oils, things like Rotella would turn to jelly in the sump if topped up with the wrong oil. I would say the engine needs stripping and checking.

Bob

 

[The_Yellow_Ardvark]

Yes I have.
A Moggy engine.
Some one had added gear oil to the sump. I guess to stop the rumble from tyhe big end.
The top end was burnt oil and that had mixed with the liquid oil and formed lumps.

A fuill strip down, a very good clean.

To the point we had to push welding wire into all the oil ways to poke out the crud.
The using a oil can force oil and petrol through to clean them out more., then the whole lot was boiled in up with washing powder to get even more rubbish out.

It was sent to a local engine place to have the required machining done to it.
When it was benched run it wasa nice tight engine.

 

[mtt.tr]

Varnasolv might do it but only if running

 

[Anguz]

Had a donkey engine ex fridge unit on a trailer
Was splash lube.... nothing came out of the sump drain plug even though there was oil on the dipstick
Took sump off, was a groove in the sludge, where the crank swung through, and a hole for the dipstick
With maybe an eggcup full of oil
After cleaning ran well, no knocks

 

[Melvyn Best]

Ford CVH engines suffered badly with Black Death, modern oils don’t seem to cause it . Have had several high mileage Volvo 240 camshafts seized in the head due to blocked oil feeds

 

[julianf]

I'm a biofules advocate, but there is a way to achieve the above when running on vegetable oil.

That does not give any insight into if it will run, just what may have caused it.

 

[dobbslc]

I had a 2.0 Pinto in a Capri that seized up the cam shaft one night, that was caused by black crunchy muck blocking the oil spray bar over the cam!
It shoved one of the followers out from under the cam and skipped the timing belt a few teeth
A good clean and knocking the follower back in with a hammer (saved striping the cam out) reset the timing and it ran well for another year before I sold it
Simple times

 

[KemppiFrog]

I had a Perkins 4-108 that the oil turned to jelly in. , I had been running it for a bit and used correct oil. But, the diesel pump did have a seal problem, so a bit of leakage into the sump? Did a bearing change and it continued for a quite a while.

 

[Migmac]

My Suzuki SJ 410 engine, the oil was big lumps. It required new big ends, was fine after that. I ran it it till it had 150k on the clock. It got the new big ends early on in its life, first year

 

[zzr1200]

Yep, Perkins 4.99 used to turn to jelly on the regular basis. The Ford dealership (when I was an apprentice) had a contract with a large bakery in East London theyhad a fleet of anout 40 Transits.
We always had a jelly mold sumped engine in for rebuild sometimes 2 or 3.... .

Strip the engine totally including removing the plugs at the ends of the main oil gallery and any other oil ways.

PS. 20ltrs+ of traffic film remover, and submerge the engine block totally, for a day...then blast with a steam cleaner, compressed air, then loads of WD40 and followed by engine oil.

 

[arther dailey]

yup, mitsi l200, ended up with new crank,conrods etc etc, it was snookered, took one heck of a lot of cleaning on the parts actually re used.