Well I dropped the pan last night on my 1.5 d15b2. What I found was some speck kinda stuff on the screen and down in that well that the pickup sits in. The screen wasn't cover up but there were some stuff on it. Not sure how much it takes to trigger the pressure light though. It's amazing how dirty the oil looked with only a hundred or so miles on it! Any ideas? Would that cause the pressure to drop when revving it just slightly (only up to like 2000-2500rpms max)? No sludge in the pan at all.

 

what color and how do the specs look like?

 

I'll take a closer look at them tonight. It was really cold last night even in my garage so my main objective was to get the pan off and look real quick at the screen.

 

Well here we go. I stuck my finger in the bottom of the oil pan area where the pickup goes. There is way more sludge than I thought! Got a finger tip full of sludge. The specks look and feel like carbon. Non-metallic. There is build-up inside the slot of the pickup. I looked to the inside of the area where the screen is and I can see build-up in there, too. Opinion?

 

Not real good, but you can be happy there's no metal shavings.

Any 'chunks' or does it feel like smooth mud? If there's chunks, how big are they? I'm wondering whether you can flush it or change oil every 100 miles for maybe 5 times? I'm not completely sure whether to tell you it's OK without taking the engine apart.

 

Pretty much mud. The flakes are small and I really think it is black carbon. I saw some of that in the valve cover when I pulled it off in the beginning while I was in the middle of the engine change. The buildup inside the part where the screen is has obviously been there for awhile.

 

do you change the oil much??

 

I've actually only put 100 or less miles on it since installing it. The previous owner said they changed changed it regularly. However, I think it was the previous owner to them that was the one that changed it regularly. The guy I bought the engine from took it out of their Civic that his son crashed and I'm not real sure how often he changed it. I do know that the oil was pretty funky when I drained it! Would carbon and sludge build up over just a few thousand miles?

 

ya it sounds like the engine didnt have the oil changed very often......if it runs fine then just put it back togeather and do a couple short 500 mile oil changes to clear out the dirty sludge build-up inside the crankcase........

 

That's prolly what I'll do. Waiting on a couple of other opinions not that yours is not appreciated. I have someone around here that works at a Honda shop that loaned me his pressure guage that I'm gonna let look at the sludge to verify. Thanks dude!

 

Just talked to the guy I bought the engine from and he said they changed the oil a couple of times the few thousand miles they had it. Would sludge build up over less than 100,000 miles (around 98,000 to be exact) in the bottom of the pan enough to clog the screen?

 

if they didnt change the oil regularly, then yes.
if the engine was well kept, then sludge should not be a lot at all, should be pretty clean actually

 

I suppose some prior owner let that crud build up, & the past few thousand miles hasn't cleaned it up. That probably means a few quick oil changes might not clean it up either.

Obviously, since you've got the pan off, clean that up. Clean up the oil pickup. (Can you remove the pickup from below without taking too much more apart?)

There's engine flush products, but I don't know firsthand. There's some discussion on http://www.sabnet.com boards about it. The turbos tend to coke the oil & make sludge, & the factory says 10k mile oil changes...

Lots of people like the stuff from http://www.auto-rx.com because it works a little slower than the stuff on the shelf at stores. That way you don't suddenly plug everything up. Even the normal stuff from auto stores might be OK as long as you combine with a few oil changes at 200 or 500 miles.

 

Thanks for all of the advice and suggestions. I'll clean everything up real good and try the flush and frequent oil changes and keep my fingers crossed.