Sludgy 1990 F150 5.0

You said earlier that the pushrods and rockers were removed / cleaned / reinstalled. The rocker fulcrums torqued to a certain torque spec. I understand the valve adjustment requires a certain procedure, more than just torquing down the fulcrums.
 
You said earlier that the pushrods and rockers were removed / cleaned / reinstalled. The rocker fulcrums torqued to a certain torque spec. I understand the valve adjustment requires a certain procedure, more than just torquing down the fulcrums.
There's no valve adjustment on a ped-mount SBF, the rockers just torque down.
 
So with the wife's convincing, 3 days work, we pulled the transmission out and is to be rebuilt by a reliable shop in town.
We are going to replace the rear main seal, the U-joints, the front of the rear end seal and the rear-end fluid.

I guess we are in deep now. :oops:

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I suppose this is now part 2:

So we got the transmission installed.

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Truck back on the road but it was putting us on the side of the road more and more often. It finally got to be 1 mile, wait 15 minutes, another mile, more waiting. Turned out to be a bad fuel pump. We had installed new tank/pump, filter and rebuilt the fuel injectors since we were there. So we dropped the tank and installed a Denso (Made in USA!) pump, soldered the wires and has been dead reliable since.

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We put in rebated M1 5w-30, a Motorcraft FL1A and ran it to 123,000 miles. 1,268 miles on the oil and filter and here are some pictures.
Magnets doing their thing.

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Bottom of the drain pan after draining oil out of the filter with no metal particles, pieces are not solid between fingers. Oil looked pretty good.

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Now the fun pictures showing the filter doing its job and collecting. Truck runs very well by the way. (Wifey's pants...)

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Another magnet at the end of the can doing its thing.

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Next is sludge that was stuck in the filter and poured out of the can; all outside of the filter...

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I suppose this is now part 2:

So we got the transmission installed.

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Truck back on the road but it was putting us on the side of the road more and more often. It finally got to be 1 mile, wait 15 minutes, another mile, more waiting. Turned out to be a bad fuel pump. We had installed new tank/pump, filter and rebuilt the fuel injectors since we were there. So we dropped the tank and installed a Denso (Made in USA!) pump, soldered the wires and has been dead reliable since.

View attachment 61322

We put in rebated M1 5w-30, a Motorcraft FL1A and ran it to 123,000 miles. 1,268 miles on the oil and filter and here are some pictures.
Magnets doing their thing.

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View attachment 61324

Bottom of the drain pan after draining oil out of the filter with no metal particles, pieces are not solid between fingers. Oil looked pretty good.

View attachment 61325

Now the fun pictures showing the filter doing its job and collecting. Truck runs very well by the way. (Wifey's pants...)

View attachment 61326

Another magnet at the end of the can doing its thing.

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Next is sludge that was stuck in the filter and poured out of the can; all outside of the filter...

View attachment 61328

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I'd be swapping out the filter a few times over the OCI. With that much crud in the filter, it was probably bypassing and allowing crud to get by the filter.
 
I'd be swapping out the filter a few times over the OCI. With that much crud in the filter, it was probably bypassing and allowing crud to get by the filter.
We intended to just remove the filter, open it and judge how far to go with the oil. Seeing this though we dumped the oil, dripping out overnight, and will install another Motorcraft filter.

Anyone have concerns with the pickup screen?
 
I'd personally just run whatever was the least efficient rock catcher filter out there for the time being, and change it every 1000 miles or so. Or even sooner.

Rock Auto has filters for your engine as low as 96 cents. Change every 500 miles.
 
Anyone have concerns with the pickup screen?
Looks like the deposits are relatively small and making it through the pickup screen to the filter. Only way to verify the screen is to drop the pan and look, but obviously a pain unless maybe you have a borescope you could get in the drain hole and see the screen.
 
No experience with trying this clean up plan but starting to think that maybe this is the worst of it and if the oil pump screen was going to clog then it would have happened during this interval. :unsure:

Introducing 3 magnets to the filter exterior, 3 round units on the engine block side and one on the end of the drain plug for the first time to this motor could have looked a bit extreme since the motor is 31 year old. "Hey look! A magnet! I am sooo attracted..."

Our current thinking is to continue with some fresh M1 5w-30 ($10), the magnets (free) and another Motorcraft FL1A ($4). Pull the filter at 1000 miles, take some pictures and go from there.
 
Looks like the deposits are relatively small and making it through the pickup screen to the filter. Only way to verify the screen is to drop the pan and look, but obviously a pain unless maybe you have a borescope you could get in the drain hole and see the screen.

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This is a good idea in my opinion. Boroscope it would be a easy approach.

And thank you cbrf3 for the pictures and reporting back on here. Really well done and appreciated. Hope that you and your family have been doing good.
 
Keep running those Motorcraft FL1A filters. IMO they are better than most filters on the market.
They seem well made and are a good fit for this clean up phase I just wish the filter media filtered smaller particles and the ADBV was made of silicone. Seemed to not have the tearing element issue, stamped made in USA with the old school string. Bought these least year, are they still this quality with current production?

The plan is to finally get to 5K changes or 1 year. I suppose the FL1A is fine for that but was looking at the Fram Ultra also.
 
They seem well made and are a good fit for this clean up phase I just wish the filter media filtered smaller particles and the ADBV was made of silicone. Seemed to not have the tearing element issue, stamped made in USA with the old school string. Bought these least year, are they still this quality with current production?

The plan is to finally get to 5K changes or 1 year. I suppose the FL1A is fine for that but was looking at the Fram Ultra also.
I’d say keep using the MC FL-1A as they are working.
 
Not sure what good the magnets are doing—if the motor is shedding metal then plugged filters from sludge is pretty trivial. Are the magnets getting ferrous material, or is stuff just happening to stick to them?
 
I have more experience with the 4.9 but dad used to have an 87 e150 w/ 351w that I remember had gotten sludged up to where the pickup was clogged and I believe they replaced the oil pump as well but that thing always had oiling issues but most likely from infrequent oil changes. I remember the pressure would start off fine but then later when your going down the road putting a load on it the gauge would drop and it would tick. It's a shame really it only had 70k when he got rid of it basically traded it to some guy that did some work around his house so he got it for practically nothing.

With the filter looking like that I'd run it another 1k change it again and then go from there but hopefully that last one caught most of it so the next ones should get better. For oil pressure you really can't trust these gauges, these Ford's are notorious for being an idiot light with a needle, typically if it detects at least some pressure it will read pretty much normal. With that much crud in there I'd at least replace the sending unit as it's only a few bucks, I'd be surprised if that tiny hole wasn't clogged up too.
 
Not sure what good the magnets are doing—if the motor is shedding metal then plugged filters from sludge is pretty trivial. Are the magnets getting ferrous material, or is stuff just happening to stick to them?
They seem to be attracting stuff before it gets into the filter. I was thinking they might be trapping ferrous material that has been inside the engine for some time, only had the truck about 10 months now. I get magnets free and I cannot see how they could cause any harm.

It is interesting to have visual results thus the pictures on this thread. Hope to never see a larger piece attached but it could prove helpful.

We sure appreciate everyone's comments and glad there is interest in this thread. ;)
 
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