Is this amount of crud in an oil filter normal? What’s in your filter?

[OleBillL]

That yellow stuff is water mixed with oil, it has no place in the crankcase. Likely plugged PCV system. It looks like lots of short trips in cold weather or you have a bad thermostat that allows the water jacket temp to be too low. Likely it has a bypass closing thermostat and the bypass has to close when cold or the engine does not warm up fast enough or stay low in cold weather no matter the loading.

Definitely use a good synthetic with detergents and change more often - like 3000 miles. The marvel mystery oil added to a hot engine then driven for 30 miles (hot coolant) then drain may help. You can scrape some of the deposits into a number of containers and mix some oils and treatments in with each to test where you can see them. The worst case is big slugs of sludge gets to the oil suction bell, so don't do anything drastic.

 

[VolvoZ]

That yellow stuff is water mixed with oil, it has no place in the crankcase. Likely plugged PCV system. It looks like lots of short trips in cold weather or you have a bad thermostat that allows the water jacket temp to be too low. Likely it has a bypass closing thermostat and the bypass has to close when cold or the engine does not warm up fast enough or stay low in cold weather no matter the loading.

Definitely use a good synthetic with detergents and change more often - like 3000 miles. The marvel mystery oil added to a hot engine then driven for 30 miles (hot coolant) then drain may help. You can scrape some of the deposits into a number of containers and mix some oils and treatments in with each to test where you can see them. The worst case is big slugs of sludge gets to the oil suction bell, so don't do anything drastic.

Yes, you’re right that the yellow slime was moisture. Just checked on the parts the other day and the yellow was gone, so the moisture evaporated out leaving just black/brown sludge. The PCV system was clogged on this car. It probably should have been replaced 75K miles ago, but most people don’t maintain their cars like many of us here on BITOG do. Of course, it wouldn’t get clogged in the first place with the use of quality synthetic oils and more frequent oil changes. I’m going to run a very short interval oil change once i get all the work done on it in the next week or so.

 

[Sandstorm]

Rislone is decent stuff. There are many places around the world that cannot obtain the HPL EC easily and might benefit from this product. It contains ~11% TMP ester w/v. If I didn't have access to HPL cleaner, I would run Rislone for cleaning.

 

[VolvoZ]

After doing a full Volvo PCV system replacement and cleaning the engine ports with a brass “pipe” brush, the engine is still putting out some crud. After putting it back together, put in some Traveller straight 30 weight HD into the Volvo 2.5T. Despite the cold temps, the engine didn’t complain too much with the 30wt. Ran it for 1500 miles and changed the oil and filter again. The 30 weight did slow starting speeds in the cold New England mornings, but sounded fine running. The quick oil change was mostly done to get the brass bristles out of the engine. When i cleaned the engine ports with that brass brush, a lot of bristles fell off (oops!). I washed alot of the bristles out of the engine with the oil pan drain open and sprayed alot of Harvest King penetrant spray and brake cleaner into the ports. Despite this, there were still a few bristles stuck in the oil filter.

Some pics of the filter pleats.

Put another cheapie filter in and some Castrol 5W-30 HM Synth Blend. Engine definitely starts easier with the 5W.