Hello,

I bought myself a 20V Blacktop yesterday and today we decided to strip the engine and take the cam cover off.
Under the cam cover we saw sludge sludge and sludge all over. The bearings and cams seems to be okay, but i'm afraid to take the head off
What do you guys think? Return the engine or just check the bottom and when there's no damage to the pistons, rings, cylinders, etc keep the engine?
The oil filter looks very clear, so that could mean two things. 1) The bottom is good and no sludge over there or 2) (I don't hope so) the oil passage is blocked.

Well...here are the pics:

Engine complete:


Cam cover itself:


Underneath the cam cover:








Tomorrow we are going to put the starter and brackter back on and check compression. I think this is possible isn't it? Valves are closed now and inlet/outlet is open and plugs are out. Should've done that right away. before stripping it :S

Years of pure negligence.... that's like oil poo.

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Should i worry for the rest? It was an A/T AE111 by the way. Don't know if that may worsen sludge comparing to m/t?

that can either be from poor oil maintenance, bad oil pump, together with clogged passageways

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Transmission type is completely unrelated to engine conditions. This is a case of bad maintenance.

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Simply put there was an obvious skimp on maintenance on this engine.

@OP: Your best bet would be to get it flushed before using it, be it with an engine flush product or at a machine shop. I'd go with the machine shop if you have the money, but it shouldn't be too much to clean up an engine.

that engine might need rebuild, it sucks bro, pure negligence, who knows if it still strong.

Tear down, clean, measure, replace as needed, hone, re-ring, re assemble.

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thats a lot of work, i just placed mine in the engine bay.

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you take a chance with that. i also suggest tearing it down and giving the engine a good cleaning. take no chances

My 3s looked like that when I got it. I decided to rebuild it. However during the build I never found anything worn out. So take off the cams and see what condition the journals are in. Lay a few strips of plastigage while you're there. Then flip the motor and do the same for the bottom end. Do a compression and leakdown test. If everything checks out then you can avoid a rebuild and just flush the motor. I would still replace the oil pump no matter what, and make sure the pickup isn't clogged

I'd either take Smaay's advice and tear the engine down, or return it if you can. However, when buying a performance engine like a Blacktop, odds are it has seen some abuse and tearing it down is always the smartest choice.

I would send it back and ask for a refund, unless they give you a 30 day start up warranty.

It's very common for 4AGE BT engine.
Only if you get super low mileage engine, you may get clean head.

No need to worry, and no need to rebuild, just flush your engine.

That looks ruff

The engine doesn't look to bad at all.

Check my rebuild album on imageshack

Only thing is that one spot one the cylinder has a little bit of a mirror, so i'm going to rehone and hopefully can use stock (new) piston rings). Also one crankshaft bearing has a bit of wear on it, nothing really bad but for a few euros i think i can replace the crankshaft and conrod bearings as well.

Besides that i'm going to bring my head, cams and bottom end to a shop that has a special washer for these parts. I want to be sure that there'll be no oil blocks at all.

Just FYI.

The engine bottom was perfect! You can't even feel in the cylinders that it even has run! Most of the bearings hardly had any damage at all and if they have it wasn't much at all.

But be aware that such ammounts of sludge will cost you money. The least you have to do is completely clean the engine and this means ofcourse buying a new engine gasket overhaul kit. I ended up with also buying new piston rings, all bearings, pistons (my own fault), etc. Pro is that a almost have a new bottom end, but the con is that it costed me a lot of money.

So before buying the engine ask if the seller can open the oil cap and see how it looks. If it looks al sludgy then you might have the same problem as i did. At least ask the seller for a startup guarantee.

I had a 60 day guarantee. After contacting my seller about the problems i've encountered he suggested that he could do 2 things. Give me a discout of 200 euro or either return the engine and get a complete cashback. I choose for the first option cause we've already invested a lot of time in the engine. the engine costed my 825 euro (without ecu and wiring) and when i include everything i think i might hit the 2000 including the rebuild, wiring, ecu, etc. Have to say that we've almost done everything regarding the rebuild by ourselves. Otherwise it would;ve exceed 3000 i guess.

Better safe than sorry, it's like having a new engine now so you don't have to worry about it when you're screaming along at 8,000 RPM. Did you go with stock pistons or a higher compression?

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I used new stock OEM pistons. I think the compression is already high enough with about 11:0. Otherwise i would have to end up with buying race fuel instead of RON98. Also thought about mounting a TRD headgasket, but only with that the compression would already raise to 11.5:1. I think that's pretty high for a daily driver.

2ZZ-GE territory there, very manageable on pump gas with a good tune though.