Let's identify a motor

Definitely a fuelie motor, no fuel pump drive on the cam.

Look at the bottom of the engine block, at the back, right along the pan rail for a cast in number.

SPark

 

Yep, has more to do with not changing the oil than the type of oil.

 

He posted the F1SE BB casting number, '91 or newer engine... I believe that's the same casting number on my '96 F-150..

 

I also doubt it is an HO, not that it matters for what you are doing, so no need to get caught up on that. Like DaveB mentioned, pull the heads and look at the pistons, the HOs have valve reliefs and the truck pistons have a 3/4" ring around the outside with a very shallow dish in the center. I can post pics in the morning I happen at this time to have one of each.

 

an engine like this is also where people make the mistake of thinking they can run a can of...motor flush...through it to clean the sludge out...does nothing but stop up every orifice, drain hole and pick up screen...

 

They are tough little engines. Doesn't matter if it is an HO, the only difference is the cam and there are much better cams out there. I feel all you have there is a core. Great candidate for a stroker engine. Use the block and the camshaft retainer plate and scrap the rest. The heads will likely cost more to rebuild than they are worth, add a few bucks and upgrade to better performance pieces.

 

I'm old.....

 

But I'm older...


Will you still love me, will you still need me, when I'm 64...

 

Decision made.

After a discussion with a "way to dang smart" friend of mine, I passed on the opportunity for a free roller block.

He and I were discussing how could anybody ever let a motor go like that, as you should see the truck it came out of...very nice, excellent black paint that was waxed at least once every 24 hours it appears as it is like looking in a mirror, some nice race style bucket seats, a stereo that looks and sounds like it may have cost $200,000 or more or maybe a little less but it would thump.

Anyway we theorized on how many times the little motor got smokin hot from lack of cool oil, well lack of oil period and the metallurgical properties and could it effect the castings molecular stability (more likely to crack under stress) , as I said he is smart but we also like to see who can sound the most intelligent and all, anyways after deciding it probably might be ok the amount of work just to get the block alone and cleaned.

Then the fact I would always have a vivid picture in my mind of how it looked and how neglected it was as I was pushing the needle towards red as I cringed wishing I didn't have that mental pic....I passed.

And yes I know it's my son's car but I might drive it on an occasion if he don't mind

 

I wouldn't be super concerned about it. It probably got that way from not being driven and the oil sitting and turning to sludge.

Most people only pay attention to the mileage between oil changes. But, if you let your engine sit for 4 months, even if you changed the oil right before letting it sit, you probably already need to do an oil flush, and not just a drain and fill.

When I got my Bronco it would only fill 3 quarts of oil into the 93 5.0 block in it. Opened it up and it looked like that. It had spent most of the last 5 years before I bought it sitting behind a guys barn. It had 12 years of perfect service records prior to all that sitting. After I cleaned the engine out (no rebuild though because that was just a beater truck) it never gave me a single engine problem. Just about the only thing I didn't ever have problems with on that truck, didn't even need to check the oil outside of a change every 5k miles. I even overheated it badly while trying to figure out a stupid pinhole leak (only found it when it started spraying anti-freeze into my alternator...) and it had no problems. Oh, and that same engine has been powering a friend of my brother-in-laws crap can racer for almost 2 years now. All he has ever done to it was port and polish, and oil changes (super budget racing).

I don't know if it's true for car engines, but when I worked in restoring industrial machinery we would see similar oil bake ons to those pics all the time. The oil that doesn't flow down gets trapped up there, jellifies while sitting, and because the jelly is really concentrated oil it has an insane viscosity, doesn't "flow" away when it gets heated and just bakes in place. There is a lot less potential for this to happen in areas with moving parts, because they will blend the oil jelly with the fresher oil a little bit, and that is *usually* enough to prevent it baking in place.

 

no Quaker Sludge for me VALVOLINE FOREVER

 

Another thing is, if the car was driven frequently between oil changes, the baked sludge would be *thinner*(but could still be layered pretty thick) because oil with lots of thermal decay (result of being driven rather than sitting) doesn't condense into as thick of a jelly.

This is of course, still a guess based on the way oil acts in an entirely different machine. There is still a TON of heat (I'd rather touch a hot exhaust again than find out I just stuck my hand into another bound electric motor case, suckers get HOT) inside non-combustion engine boxes. And a electrically driven mechanical press doing 20 tons at 40K cycles an hour gets pretty darn hot too. Just saying, I've seen a lot of baked oil in a LOT of different machines. Very rarely was it a serious problem.

 

You'll never get anything done taking everyone's advice. I guess you'll just have to buy 100% new parts, unless you can find an engine whisperer...

 

That's the track I try to take to be honest. After working in reconditioning parts I try really hard to not use used stuff. Just too many nasty memories of coming home ... nasty. One time I had to clean oil journals big enough I could stick my big hairy sasquatch arms all the way in them. 4 showers and I still couldn't get all the baked sludge off (On another note, those big oil journals are dangerous, I once watched a guy lose a hand because someone left the cover off an access point on a very large machine, lost his balance, did not find a good place to regain it...)

 

But that's not a engine in a car, unless you buy a 100% new block, and all the parts, some of it is going to be used regardless.