Sludgy thick covering on the rockers! Am I in trouble?

[Pearly]

Hello all,
A few weeks back I bought a 3.0rx gq with about 240k on the clock on the rb30 petrol motor.
I needed a few things for roadworthy so I used the delay in getting a new water pump ( yes the dreaded drip from the spindle housing!) and pulled of belts and anything else I could to check it out. In pulling the rocker cover I found thick .. I mean say 5mm plus black sludge covering almost everything! When it was running it sounded ok but in looking at photos of others with their covers off on this site, it should be much cleaner.
I was a bit worried about just flooding the rockers with degreaser or similar as not sure how it would affect oil channels etc. And might just block them?. Hence I just put the cover back on and bought some engine oil flush!
Before I spin it over, any thoughts on the gunk and if I should try to clean off manually ... without taking the head off......
Many thanks and sorry for long thread.. I,ll take a photo next time to explain better.
... Ps anyone around in cairns, qld? I heard from one person but would be interested if there are others near me? Pearly

[Hodge]

Hey mate. Thick sludgy stuff inside the engine, could be oil that hasnt been changed for a while... Here is a pic of an example.
45592

[Pearly]

That's it ! I hope that's the case anyway.
I bought the gq from an old cane farmer lady who wasn't a keen mechanic for sure! I found the prop grease nipples under 1/2 inch of caked mud - never seen a grease gun for years, maybe decades... so hope that's it... it follows the lack of prior maintenance theme I have come across. I will see how the oil flush goes
Regards
Pearly

[Ben-e-boy]

That's it ! I hope that's the case anyway.
I bought the gq from an old cane farmer lady who wasn't a keen mechanic for sure! I found the prop grease nipples under 1/2 inch of caked mud - never seen a grease gun for years, maybe decades... so hope that's it... it follows the lack of prior maintenance theme I have come across. I will see how the oil flush goes
Regards
Pearly
I would be careful using an oil flush on a motor that has gone 10's of thousands of km without a service. All that sludge is going to go through the bearings and everything, it could make matters worse,

[93patrol]

run some diesel fuel through it. haha:biggrin:

[Pearly]

Yeah I was a bit worried about the effects of flushing. Maybe I,ll try a straight oil change first and recheck under the cover next time I do a change -- in only 5000k,s time rather than 5 years time!

[kevin07]

when I get a new car I always put a litre of diesel in the motor after its warmed up and idle it for 20 odd minutes. but if you got the top off clean as much as you can off,and add some lifter free to the new oil worked wonders on my tb42e. just for the record I did not do this to the crd.