Sludge

My family owns 5 vehicles. I change the oil on them all every 3K miles and purchase oil and filters by the case during sales. I keep excellent records on dates, mileage, etc. but could not show you a single receipt that shows an oil related purchase if asked. I could probably produce some charge card receipts from the local auto parts stores, but many times my oil purchases come from the large discount retailers when they offer better prices.

My 2.7L is now at 4 years and about 45K miles, so I am past the warranty period so this matters little now anyway, but my point is that there are likely many Chrysler customers who do their own oil changes that won't have receipts. I am hoping the engine will make another 6 years to reach 100K+ miles. Based on input from Bill P, I've begun to use 8 ounces of MMO with every oil change.

Bob

Just change the oil at regular intervals, forget all the after market crap, save you money and take your family out to dinner on it. The biggest cause of engine damage is lack of oil changes period

I've been driving for some 31+ years now and never experienced a major internal engine failure on any vehicle I've owned. I generally have never burned much oil either, although back in the 1970's I owned some Chevy Vegas with the Aluminum 2.3L engine blocks that consumed a quart or two between changes. I just think based on what I've seen, read, and heard that the 2.7L is a weak engine and is very much prone to sludge build up. That's is why I was interested in the original poster's maintenance history. (It was not provided that I saw...)

I will continue to do what I've been doing ... The MMO treatment is only on this vehicle with the 2.7L since I felt it was cheap insurance.

Bob

"maxpower" wrote

Gee, *there's* a ringing endorsement...not.

Ramble on child

Acually Chrysler doesnt recommend any kind of additives added to the engine oil

But that also begs the question of what, exactly, is "proper maintenance." Yes, its following the recommended service procedures, but a GOOD engine should be able to tolerate a certain amount of abuse over its lifespan without ill effect. If you have to coddle an engine to get a reasonable life out of it, its not a "good" design. And running synthetic oil on a 3000 mile change interval (as some do with the 2.7) is MAJOR coddling in my opinion. Our 3.5 has run 220,000 miles on ~9000 mile oil change intervals (synthetic) with nothing more than timing belts, 2 water pumps, fuel injector O-rings, and one set of lower intake gaskets, and my old 318 has gone further than that with LESS meticulous care.

I doubt if anyone, including DC, knows (but I bet they, from some statistics, have a better idea than *we* do). 8^)

I *can* say this: Some changes were made in the '00-'01 time frame for the specific purpose of reducing sludge buildup and improving the lubrication system.

An example: You'll see posts by people on the Chrysler forums (primarilly

about the rubber elbow that connects the pipe from the valve cover to the PCV valve routinely clogging up (not just partially, but totally occluding) with a mixture of powdery and gummy soot (and the walls of the elbow itself getting gooey/gummy. Starting in '00 (or '01 - haven't been able to nail it down for certain), they redesigned the pipe to the PCV valve to include a little heat exchanger (an existing small coolant hose is spliced into the two coolant ports of the heat exchanger) to steal some heat to prevent the blow-by gases from condensing out in the pipe and clogging it, disabling the PCV system.

Why did they do that (and other lube system improvements) if there weren't a (real) problem?

(BTW - for those with earlier 2.7 engines, you might be interested in replacing the existing PCV pipe with the redesigned one with the heat exchanger - it is a drop-in replacement. I did it to mine a few weeks ago - DC P/N 04663792AH - $20-30. You need to replace the PCV valve at the same time - I recommend dealer item on that too as I've seen too much crap in PCV valves in the aftermarket world even from otherwise reputable companies like Purolator.)

IMO...

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')

I'm flattered, Bob. 8^)

You might take a look at my other post with time stamp similar to this one about the redesigned PCV pipe to prevent the PCV hose from clogging

- you might consider getting that. Just curious: Have you ever checked the PCV valve hose? If so, what did that elbow look like inside - the one that plugs right into the PCV valve?

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')

Sorry Max, but Chrysler (the people who recommend 7,500 mile oil changes in these cars) has very low credibility when it comes to this engine. I can almost guarantee that with 7,500 mile oil changes and operating conditions well within the Schedule A maintenance criteria, a large number of these engines would fail by 80,000 miles. I have also seen first-hand posts of owners who claim to have presented all oil change receipts showing they met the letter of the "law" on oil changes, and DC refused to help with engine repair/replacement within the warranty period. Their reasoning (paraphrasing): "We don't consider that there is such a thing as a Schedule A driving condition. By default, we make all of our judgements based on Schedule B. Request for help denied."

Fact is, this is exactly the kind of problem that certain additives (MMO, Sea Foam) will help with. BTW - you ought to try the DC anti-foam additive that DC recommends against using. It improves 42LE shifting without creating problems. Hmm - I wonder why they carry it?

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')

For those interested, I posted some photos of the redesigned PCV valve hose on DI.net:

Scroll about half-way down the first page of that thread (I'm Peva there) to the post where the photos are. Since that thread, I have actually installed the new hose with heat exchanger - just haven't posted the post-install photos. Might get around to it some day. The install was 10 minutes - plug-n-play, perfect fit.

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')

And here's an earlier thread on DI.net in which I and a few others are quite by accident stumbling onto the addition of the heat exchanger in later years of LH cars:

Three pages of discussion, head, scratching, etc., but a 'Eureka!!' ending. Good reading if you have trouble sleeping tonight. 8^)

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')

... Are you married? How many kids do you have? You have pets? Which one is your favorite? Does your wife snore?

No need to apoligize again. I am posting what I have been told by Chrysler and their TSB's.

The answer is knowing when they are conveying useful, accurate info. and when they are F.O.S. On this subject they are absolutely F.O.S. (because they are covering their legal and financial butts).

It is totally conceivable that they have blanket statements of "no additives" peppered throughout their documentation at the insistence of their lawyers and MBA's so that they can deny warranty claims if an additive were used. Wouldn't put it past them one bit.

IOW - "We're not going to admit a problem, we're not going to tell you what we know to be the root causes of the problem so that you can take pre-emptive action on your own, we'll not recommend or require the use of synthetic oil like some of our competitors with similar problems have done because jeopardize any legal case if it came to that (admission of a problem), we'll put out b.s. publicity information (mis-applied and meaningless/incomplete statistics about numbers of complaints on the problem) to hide the problem while in the background we're making internal design changes to correct the "non-problem" so we can use it on our new line of vehicles, we'll try to use any excuse we can to deny a claim if it fails, and if you do anything on your own to try to avoid a failure, like using additives, and it still fails, we'll use that as an excuse not to pay too."

Did I leave anything out?

And once again, I'm very , very sorry! 8^)

Bill Putney (To reply by e-mail, replace the last letter of the alphabet in my adddress with the letter 'x')

Once again, no need to be sorry.. As I said, The dealer reps inform us to not use additives, they do not want us putting MOA or any other additves in the engine oil. I believe the biggest reason was because it caused emissions component to fail prematurely and that some owners thought it would extend the oil changes to twice that was recommended . As I said, this is what I was told, Im sure Lite bulb Stern willl put his 2 cents in on this and then hide under his rock again

...And does your chewing gum lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight?

What percentage of engines ARE properly maintained? Sticking to "american" brands, I'd say significantly below 25% With the imports, for the first 5 years, likely closer to 40%. Some brands significantly higher, in some areas. When I was Toyota service manager, something like 50% were consistently within time/mileage for the driving type experienced,

25%, more or less were within the "regular" schedule and should have been extreme, and possibly 25% went significantly over either by time or mileage on a fairly regular basis. Numbers mabee closer to 50, 40 and 10. - but I drilled the importance of mainenance into the owners' heads relatively effectively.

I agree though, that a PROPERLY maintained engine would be extremely unlikely to die due to coking/sludge.

Bill,

My Intrepid is an '01 with abut 45K. I've only had it a year now, but know the maintenance history since it came from my next door neighbor. I've not had the PCV off yet to take a look. Based on your comments, mine may already have the redesigned tube.

Bob