A few years back I cleaned the top end of an engine of sludge, attempting to be
reasonable careful to cleanup all of the scrapped gunk. Some of it escaped me
and did
in fact, partially clog the pump screen. I dropped the pan and cleaned the
screen.
However this was from hardened sludge that I had to scrape off. I doubt that
any
sludge, which is disolved by the cleaning action of a solvent type approach
would cause
a problem. Afterall, the way these products work is to disolve the sludge (ie:
place
it in suspension in the oil), this should pass right through the screen.
If it were me I would plan on performing this over a few months. You are not
in a
terrible hurry are you ? I would start with a high detergent conventional oil,
plan to
change the oil soon, maybe ofter 500 miles or when the oil turns black. A few
days
before the oil change add 1 qt of automatic trans fluid, then perform the oil
change.
Do this a few times and see if it helps enough.
Chris recommended using straight AFT for short time, and he seems to know alot
about
these kinds of things so maybe this is OK. However I would be cautious. AFT
looks to
me to be about a 10 wt oil, with a very aggresive cleaning action. I would
worry that
it might not provide sufficient bearing loading ability. Ditto for kersosene,
only more
so.
Good luck,
-Roger
GDonati@aol.com wrote:
>
> Does anyone have any tool or fluid or technique they can recommend for
> removing sludge and varnish from inside of an engine without disassembling it
> completely? The engine (' 88 Ford 302) runs very well otherwise, just noisey
> lifters and crud on the bottom of the oil pan. My understanding is that
> flushing fluids will "pick up" the sludge and plug the pump screen and other
> orifices. Any ideas?
> Thanks,
> Greg Donati
|