powerwave

dude. i don't know wtf happened in the moderator edited post above, but the "it isn't sludge" opinion isn't coming from some shadetree driveway mechanic, ok? this is coming from someone who's been in hundreds of toyota engines over years working at the dealership. from someone who has replaced sludged engines under warranty no less. OP, if that thing has 217k miles instead of 117, that's impressive.

powerwave

you wanna see engine sludge, here's engine sludge. varnish on the other hand is common in high mileage engines.

ES3_Ray

i honestly almost puked when i saw those 2 pictures up there...

wow. i know from about 100k ago my rear bank looked just like the front. just a tint of oil color on the walls.

also:

03 ES

it just looks a bit varnished, which is pretty standard for a car with 217k on it...
it certainly doesnt look too sludged to me....ive seen a million times worse on a car with less than a 1/4 of that milage...

maintenence is everything folks.
take it from a toyota tech...ive seen it all and it just takes a bit of preventitive maintenence to save you a world of hassles down the road

llcoolpass

i agree with you guys. yep. cause we have seen the rear bank where most of the engine failure causing sludge has been known to form. [<----SARCASM.] unless what I said is been censored by communist china, then you can go back and see that I noticed it had a lot of varnish that for a front bank seemed kinda bad. and the fact that he/she has the 1mz-fe from the recall time period I wanted to make sure he/she addressed this by inspecting the rear valve train....

that picture you showed is one sludged up engine! no disagreement here! even the pick up screen is disguisting. that engine did fail of course by the time you took that picture, right?

and mileage doesn't equal something directly relevant int terms of oil sludge. if anything, high mileage would mean less sludge build up with the idea that more highway means higher flow, better quality oil contaminant burn-off, and more oil changes for a given a mount of time and less time spent idling around.

tomstep2

I know this is the ES Forum, however Powerwave's pics remind me of my RX300's engine when it failed due to the sludge issue but mine didn't look quite that bad. Luckily Lexus replaced my engine a few years ago as Toyota/Lexus had a TSB for sludge then. This was before the recent settlement. I had to provide proof to my dealer of oil changes/maintenance done elsewhere(ie, receipts, service records, etc...). The grueling part at that time was waiting to see if my engine would be covered.

The RX had about 110K on it and oil was changed every 5K miles, but was with standard oil. Since the new engine, we only use synthetic.

lobuxracer

iTrader: (2)

OP - your engine looks perfectly normal for having been run on dino oil before you got it. My Supra looks the same for the same reason even though I've put nothing but Red Line synthetic (except the one time I took it to the dealer and they kept my RL and used their Pennzoil - bastiges!) in it since I got it at 32k miles.

There is nothing you can do to clean off the varnish that won't create more problems than it solves. Nothing short of paint stripper or mechanical cleaning will remove what you have, and it just doesn't look good. I'm sure the engine runs just fine. I agree with the Toyota techs and I've had my hands in car engines since 1979.

llcoolpass

I agree lobuxracer. But I suspect the rear

Lexmex

I took these in Mexico about two years ago and you can see how clean this is.

Lexmex

Another shot

Lexmex

And another

Lexmex

And a final shot

llcoolpass

rear head?