you guys ever flush your engine? when i change my oil its as black as satans heart! i thought maybe i should buy some cheap oil add a little seafoam, run it for a few minutes then change it again to clear out everything..what do you guys think? by the way i have about 105k on the car

 

Never flushed the engine. Dark oil mainly means the oil is doing its job of suspending the combustion byproducts. If you really want to see how dirty your engine is, pull a valve cover and see how much crud you've got in your engine. Normally they're pretty clean.

HTH, and have a good one,
Mike

 

A good tip from others that I tried today, is to back the car on ramps so that the nose is downward, in the direction of the drain plug.
It really does a good job of getting all the old (dark) oil out.
You may have to jack the side a little though to get your pan under there.

 

If you don't jack the back of the car up more than the front when draining oil, you will keep 4 ounces of old oil in your pan.

What oil do you use? Mobil 1 hardly darkens at all after about 6000 miles in my 1998 C5 (and I have 123,000 miles on it). My car only uses 1/2 quart in that distance, if even that much.

 

One thing you can do to help flush the old oil out is , after letting it drain completely, pour about 1/2 qt. of new oil in the engine. As it runs down the head into the crankcase, it will purge the few oz. of old oil out, and you can see the new oil dripping out.

 

This is a good tip, but as "Vetedrmr" said in the previous post, as long as the engine remains clean inside, that's all that counts.

For example, I messed around with some aftermarket valve covers on a Z-28 that I also have. Could never get them to seal correctly, and I had them off and on several times before I gave up on them. However, during that time, I was able to see how clean the inside of the engine was. I changed the oil (dino oil) every 2000 miles, and it would come out black, but the inside of the engine was very clean.


In other words, "Don't worry, be happy".....

 

I'm not a fan of "CLEANING" out an engine,if oil comes out black it's doing it's job holding contaminents in suspension. You introduce something into the engine to break up deposits inside the engine, which up to this point was residing comfortably in your engine, now sludge, along with oil and byproducts of combustion which is mostly carbon is just like sand circulating around in your engine which may or may not come out with your oil change.think of it this way sometimes when somebody gets shot or a piece of metal enters their body(like me when pressing off a bearing it exploded and a piece of metal shot into my hand between thumb and fore finger) many times the doctor says it may be more damaging to remove.So want to clean up a little bit just change your oil more often you will never hurt an engine with more frequent oil changes but cleaning it out you just may hurt it

 

guys thanks for the input. i just added half a can of seafoam before the oil change (ran it for about 50 miles) .. i guess it would be a little too much changing the oil twice in one day

 

Mickey,

Adding a half-can of Seafoam probably was pretty benign, but still don't base how dirty the engine is internally with how dirty the oil appears as you drain it.

Another thing you can do to give you some peace of mind is to get the oil analyzed. Many of us here (including me) use Blackstone labs (www.blackstone-labs.com). That'll give you some real data on how your engine is doing internally.

For example, my engine has gone through over 195K miles and seven years of autocross with the occasional DE. Point is, she's been run hard and taken care of. I used to run the oil a set number of miles, but analysis showed the oil had plenty of life left and there was no appreciable wear in the analyses done. So, I started running the oil life monitor down to 0%. Oil additive package still had plenty of margin, engine wear levels stayed consistent, and life went on like that until around 180,000 miles.

At that point the wear on the engine started trending upwards (well, duh!). After discussing this with Blackstone, I started changing the oil when the OLM gets below 50% remaining (still over 5,000 miles and a half dozen autocross events). Wear levels dropped back down to normal levels.

Point is, if you REALLY want to know what's going on with your engine, an oil analysis is a GREAT tool.

HTH, and have a good one,
Mike

 

VETTE DRMR.... That is probablly the best advice I've seen on the forum with regards to lubrication, oil change issues ,and the correct course of action to take,oil anaylsis has been done for decades on heavy equipt.On behalf of all forum members I thank you for sound advice as evidenced by the long trouble free life (not easy) but well cared for life your vette has experienced

 

I just changed the oil this last weekend; I'll let y'all know what happens at 196,000 miles.

Have a good one,
Mike

 

Don't flush it. It's a quick way to plug the pick-up screen on the oil pump eventually leading to oil starvation.

 

VETTE DRMR thank you very much for the insight

 

you have anything to back this up?

 

Do you know if Blackstone adjusts their average wear numbers to account for how many miles you run the oil between changes?
Obviously, if you change the oil more often the amount of wear particles will go down, but are you actually reducing wear?
I have read comments that imply that you actually get more initial wear when you change the oil....but I am not sure that really makes any sense?

 

Actually yes; oil flush = engine rebuilds for mine and my brother's engines when we were in our early 20s. We thought it would be a good idea to.

Modern oils have good detergeant additive packages that should preclude you from ever having to flush the crankcase if the car has been taken care of.

 

It hasn't been a practice to flush engines since Mobil introduced their 10-30 detergent oil back in the early 60s. If your oil is truly black on a white paper towel you have a problem. Diesel oil is made to keep carbon products in suspension. Gas engine oil isn't. I have used Blackstone for years. Most people don't want to hear that we can easily go 6K on oil. They would rather believe what the standard was back in 1962. Oil and better built engines have made 3K changes and old man's tale. I bought my 04 back in Feb. I changed the oil, ran it 3k and sent Blackstone a sample. The analysis came back excellent. They recommended 3K more and re-sample. I ran it 3K more, changed the oil and filter and sent them another sample. They recommended 7K on the next change. I will go to 6K and not worry about it one minute.

PS: My oil was dark brown after 6K and I only used 1/2 quart. (Pennzoil Platinum 10-30)