I am so keen to get goodies. Any suggestions what I should pirate off that? Fits in your toolbox size preferred, ha ha. For real but, I would like to ransack those wrecks, cause it is a lot of fun to get treasure from the wreckers. That's a day out for me. Just don't really know what to go for. Experienced buccaneers please apply. Last Holdens I owned before this one were HZ and HJ wagons (boom jigga jig boom with that three on the tree from 1st to 2nd, still get a laugh out of that sound to this day). They made some Holden with a Nissan motor, which put me off for a bit there, but I see Holden mojo was regained after that disaster.
Anyway, I wanted to come back here to wrap up about the valve stem seals for the next guy.
After you done your work, make sure there is no crap at all inside the top of the heads, unless you want to pull your sump off and clean the oil pick up after.
I thought I was pretty clean. I blocked all the holes with tissues while I was working. I used a paint brush to wash in there with a bit of gasoline and a rag to mop up all the oil. It went really dry after that and I was able to use a stiffer brush to to remove all the scale and blow it out as dust. Which I read somewhere here is really carcinogenic, so I avoided that. Came up pretty good.
But I wasn't able to drive around too long at all after putting everything back together before I suffered low oil pressure. This happened as soon as I got out on the highway and got a bit of flow going through the motor.
You want to make sure you change your oil immediately as well. I had only just changed the oil when I started the work, and I didn't want to waste it. So I was really careful to cover everything so no **** could get in the motor. I thought I will use this oil to at least circulate a bit around my freshly cleaned timing bits and the top of the heads before I change it.
Well, idling was fine. But I only got 1 minute down the road before the pick up was blocked. As other people have described, the motor started sounding like a diesel cause it was starving for oil. Those tappet things started making a fuss.
This is what the pick up looked like when I removed it.
So basically, inside the bottom of my engine was shiny and sludge free, after 40 000km of oil change every 5000km. And let me tell you when I bought the car, it was the abyss of sludge down there. As you can see, the pick up was not sludged up at all.
But it was totally blocked with scale from the PCV valve; shitloads of silicone gasket material, much of which was in colours I never used; a few bits of plastic, mostly prongs from the air intake for the PCV system and yellow strings from the thread of the oil filler cap; a pink jelly like substance which may have started its life as some kind of plastic which then degraded; a lot of paintbrush hairs (so much for cleanliness); and what seemed to be sand and gravel, a fair bit of which had accumulated in the bottom of the sump as well. That gets into everything here.
I had no oil pressure problems before the work. So if you want to avoid the sump job, on no account start your motor until you change the oil, no matter how clean you think you were.
You could wash it out a bit in there too, let it drain out through the sump plug. Bit of pettie down those holes in the head going to the sump to clean the trough. Or if you don't like that, in through the plastic oil level sensor hole in the sump. Drain everything out through the sump plug hole.
Personally, however, I would recommend drop the sump no matter what. There are excellent instructions in the how-to section. Albeit my car only has three hex bolts through the bell housing to the sump, and I had no trouble getting them out with an 11mm ring spanner. It is actually not a bad job either, certainly not the hardest, but you are going to be spending all day on it.
Cause you can flush your motor all you want, and you won't be able to clean that pick up well, because of the silicon rubber that catches inside that ring around the mouth. With no oil pressure, it drops inside the ring. Which is what happens when you try to wash out your sump without removing it. Soon as you start the engine again, it plasters itself all over the gauze.
To be honest, it is hard to clean well once you have the pickup in your hand. You need to some spend some time on that. It is almost like that ring was included to make sure GM sells motors, it does such a good job of retaining blockage materials.
Oil to the head makes such a difference. Very satisfying job that, to see the car run after. Mine is purring like a kitten. Sump and oil pick up cleans ought be compulsory. Whoever invented that sump with no simple access needs their head read. Surely some conspiracy? Same Machiavellian bean counter who supplied the design concept for the pick up, is my guess.
My motor has done 231 000 km. I bought it at 195 000 for nothing. It had been running for 10 years with 10w 40 oil in it. Everyone ignores the effort of reading manufacturers' recommendations, and also goes for what is cheapest here, which is that grade of oil. Sludging was extreme, and oil was busting out the seams. I had to change the poor old oil pump.
It probably only got an oil change every 20 000, cause everyone tries to save a bit extra by stretching the rules there too. Yet, after cleaning it up and changing the timing chains - chains only - it is actually in really good condition. That scoring on the camshaft bearing is the only damage I found.
Now I am using zero oil. The valve stem seals were the solution, cause of that scale I showed. That is very satisfying. I believe this engine will last ages now. We will see. The point is, and I will go over to the PCV thread to discuss it, is that catch can is super important from new, and so is using the correct grade of oil (5W 30) and very regular oil changes. Secret to longevity with this one. Scale in the motor, leading to blockages and grit scoring, I have seen is the primary cause of wear. Still, my motor has demonstrated great resilience, cause it has been mistreated by its previous owner, and driven carelessly by him and by myself.
I reckon they are a good motor. I like the Chevrolet Vortec motors too. Chevrolet makes some good big cars, and of course Australians have improved a lot on that.
Total cost of the valve stem seal work blew out a bit there. Ended up coughing up an extra $20 for an oil pick up seal, which bumped me up to about $80 I suppose for everything. Possibly the work was responsible for the computer fiasco, but under ordinary circumstances you could avoid that by unplugging the coil packs from the wiring harness and undoing those two bolts at the back of the motor and then always moving it around very gently. And, by making sure you got a full battery when you start it again.
