I had a TBI that looked like that inside. I had an oil cooler line blow off and ended up pulling over with maybe 1 quart left in the pan. I ran it another 100k miles after I topped it off before it started knocking bad, but when I tore it down it still had oil baked onto everything.

 

This is what mine looked like at 144k miles when I pulled the stock heads off to swap on the ones from Trick Flow. Bought the truck off my parents and they were apperently sticklers for scheduled synthetic oil changes.

 

^^^ Thats what mine looked like at 130k

 

Everytime I change my oil in my 5.3 rocks come out of the oil pan drain. Like literal "rocks" lol

Truck runs great, no ticking, doesn't use oil, nothing wrong with it at all. It just has rocks coming out of the engine.

Funny thing is I know both the previous owners and I know they didn't do anything to it prior to selling it to me. It's almost like someone opened the oil cap and dumped in rocks and dirt.

 

We need some pics of these rocks.

 

I'll see what I can do when I pull the engine to swap in the stroker engine. I'll probably pull the pan just to see WTF is going on in there.

 

rocks...

 

Just a little follow up - I finally dropped the oil pan in my trucks old 5.3

Rocks were an understatement! Who would do that!?!

 

Damn...

 

lol. someone pissed off another at some point.