Oil Check

[rover3l]

When checking my oil today (changed every 3000 miles), I inspected inside the valve cover by removing the oil filler cap. The metal surface seems to have a brown coating that can be scratched off with a finger nail. Is this a bad sign for the rest of the engines condition?

[texasoil]

You have varnish. Not a good thing to have. 3 approaches to remove it. 1) Use the STP engine flush per instructions. 2) use Seafoam or similar volatile solvents (all contain xcasv-ether, alcohol, xylene) per directions, or 3) use one of the new 'high mileage-clean-up oils.

Caused by running oil too long between changes, cheap gas, oil not formulated to handle gasahol.

[Q451990]

Some residue on the tops of the rocker covers is normal, even with good oil change habits - at least with our choices in oil. What you don't want is varnish on the internals of the block and heads...

If you've truely changed your oil every 3K (and in a reasonable interval) on your car since it was new - it's unlikely that you have a varnish problem.

Here's how my heads looked with the rocker cover off, which I would think is about as good as it gets - and they still spent some time getting the residue off of the inside of the rocker covers.

Heath

[elwesso]

Heath which Q is that from??

Rover.. You might just start doing the ATF trick every so often... That wil help slowly remove the stuff..... I would start doing it after the next oil change and do it before every change..... You can use it with seafoam too!

[Q451990]

Heath which Q is that from??

That's Q2 at 47K on her visit to T3 for guides last fall. Q1 looked pretty much the same at 120K or so...

Heath

[texasoil]

Saw your photo. While the heads are clean compared to many--they stillhave a lot of yellow /amber varnish on them, Shame on you.