I've read through the thread started at the one before this one and going back to the beginning. I seriously thought that I was going to see a picture with severly packed nasty gooey sludge. That sludge looks hardened and crusty. It really isn't as bad as I thought it would be.
If you don't want to run Auto-Rx, then LC is probably your next best bet, then the other stuff, but I would stay away from anything kerosene or strong-solvent-based such as MMO. I smell MMO and see how thin it is and it seems exactly like the can of motor flush that my friend dumped into his engine with fresh oil and a fresh filter after it had a 9,000 mile interval with dino oil. It looked about as bad as what you have but the stuff wasn't baked on and it wasn't quite so thick either, but there was also good black varnish coat to many surfaces. That motor flush stuff really doesn't do too much for hard crap in there and hadn't touched the varnish, I wouldn't recommend a kerosene-based product, it just didn't work, and now that I know that it could possibly dislodge a chunk and clog things, it isn't worth it. Basically what we did was run it until the oil became roughly the color of root beer on the dipstick and we would change it out, which ran something like 200 miles, then 500, another 500, then 1,000, then we just went with 3,000 mile changes, but it will be different for your engine, it is something you need to check up on, such as every gas fill, don't forget to check oil level until you know if it is a burner/consumer or not.
WHATEVER you do, I would say that since I can't see the bottom end, I would say that if the oil starts looking pretty dark, then you might want to change the oil because short intervals will be necessary, could be as little as 500-1,000 miles and that oil might become too dirty to continue cleaning and your oil filter would become clogged around the same time.
If I paid $550 for a car as you have and I had another on hand, I would simply just run short intervals with a dino HDEO until judgement called that a 3,000 mile interval with HDEO is fine, I would run that interval and then start the next interval with synthetic oil to clean even better. I wouldn't care too much about the sludge as long as it was slowly reaching the goal of becoming clean.
A good HDEO would be Rotella T 15w-40, it is pretty cheap, I think $6.something for a 4 quart/gallon jug.
If you don't want to run Auto-Rx, then LC is probably your next best bet, then the other stuff, but I would stay away from anything kerosene or strong-solvent-based such as MMO. I smell MMO and see how thin it is and it seems exactly like the can of motor flush that my friend dumped into his engine with fresh oil and a fresh filter after it had a 9,000 mile interval with dino oil. It looked about as bad as what you have but the stuff wasn't baked on and it wasn't quite so thick either, but there was also good black varnish coat to many surfaces. That motor flush stuff really doesn't do too much for hard crap in there and hadn't touched the varnish, I wouldn't recommend a kerosene-based product, it just didn't work, and now that I know that it could possibly dislodge a chunk and clog things, it isn't worth it. Basically what we did was run it until the oil became roughly the color of root beer on the dipstick and we would change it out, which ran something like 200 miles, then 500, another 500, then 1,000, then we just went with 3,000 mile changes, but it will be different for your engine, it is something you need to check up on, such as every gas fill, don't forget to check oil level until you know if it is a burner/consumer or not.
WHATEVER you do, I would say that since I can't see the bottom end, I would say that if the oil starts looking pretty dark, then you might want to change the oil because short intervals will be necessary, could be as little as 500-1,000 miles and that oil might become too dirty to continue cleaning and your oil filter would become clogged around the same time.
If I paid $550 for a car as you have and I had another on hand, I would simply just run short intervals with a dino HDEO until judgement called that a 3,000 mile interval with HDEO is fine, I would run that interval and then start the next interval with synthetic oil to clean even better. I wouldn't care too much about the sludge as long as it was slowly reaching the goal of becoming clean.
A good HDEO would be Rotella T 15w-40, it is pretty cheap, I think $6.something for a 4 quart/gallon jug.
