this^^^^

i have a junkyard 5.3 in my truck with low oil pressure. it has about 15psi at idle and 50 at wide open throttle. i cut my oil filter open every oil change and it still looks good. i even swapped oil pumps and cam retainer plate thinking that was the problem. the first 2 oil changes (1st at 100 miles and 2nd at 500 miles) looked bad, the sludge/trash cleared up after that.

 

Looks like dirt/carbon to me too. Can always check the filter media with a magnet and see what you pick up

 

I thought this was the new oil filter?

 

Last time I saw this junk in a motor, it had the Castech heads and oil and antifreeze had been mixing. One we caught early and it has had 0 problems in 30k miles. The other he ran for at least a year with this problem before it was fixed and the damage was adding up. Make sure to check your rocker arms and push rods if go through it . It clogged this one up and chewed up the tips and rockers.

 

It is, but he said the oil was really black and dirty before changing it.



IMO, I am sure the motor was not taken care of. Personally when I encounter this I run cheap oil with at least 1 quart of tranny fluid through it. Trans fluid has detergents in it that will help loosen up all the loose Carbon build up. The other option would be marvel mystery oil or some type of engine oil system flush but its much more expensive than Trans fluid and you're just going to dump it anyway.

It may not have been full of oil when they thought it lost oil pressure. If you run them hard when they are low you can suck the pan dry.

I would flush it again with trans fluid and a cheap filter. If there are no strange noises and it has pressure, I would change the oil to whatever you prefer with a good filter and run it.

 

I agree with 1 fastbrick. It looks like carbon/trash from not taking care of the engine. I would do a good flush with transmission fluid. I would run about 500 miles with the trans fluid then change it. The about 500 before u change it next time put more trans fluid in and u should be good. It dont hurt to put 2 quarts in if u want to.

 

So how about 5 quarts of trans fluid? Jk. I think I'll try to clean it and then change it out anyways...but then I'm gambling if the 6.0 I'm wanting to put in is not in the same condition. Just trying to find the right swap out for the right price.

 

I here ya. Im thinkin really hard on a 6.0 swap myself.

 

At least you could pull the covers off of the 6.0L before you put it in the truck. Aside from that crap in the filter, how does it run?

 

Very true- the motor runs quite no foreign noises, no lifter noise