FitDesiGuy

Hello all,

Hopefully you are doing well. I'm not doing so well as I may have to dish out a bunch of money on a repair. I have a 2000 Lexus Es300 with 150k miles and there seems to be sludge at the front gasket. I'm not sure whether or not it is blown but it seems like it is leaking at least. I checked my oil dipstick and it is about a quart under in oil. I'm hoping the head gasket isn't blown but there is some leakage there for sure.

The pics are posted below.

Wondering how much it'll cost to repair this.

Also wondering if Marvel Mystery oil will help clean up the sludge.

Thank you for all your help
God Bless!

LeX2K

You might have sludge you might not only way to know is remove the valve cover and look. Speaking of valve cover it looks like the gasket is starting to leak that's the oil you see dripping down nothing to do with a head gasket.

Do you know the maintenance history of the car? How often does it get an oil change?

ES300NZ

what you're seeking is oil vapor on the side of the head. It actually looks like it's come with the air going through the radiator, it's probably from other cars on the road. (exhaust).

Actual sludge is only visible if you take the cam cover off, this is because under the oil cap is a metal plate, which makes visibility of cam's and sludge impossible.

[edit] had another look, yet definite leak can see it on the headers. (the others are right)

speedkar9

Your valve cover is starting to leak oil. Its not hard to change the front cover yourself. Here's a DIY on the whole job:

https://www.clublexus.com/forums/es-...placement.html

Once the valve cover is off, you can see if the engine has oil sludge.

Has it been consuming a lot of oil? Does the tail pipe spew black smoke?

Oro

1) There's no reason to suspect "sludge" from anything shown there. If the car has a history of short trips and neglected OCIs, then you might want to open the front valve cover to check, or the pan and inspect the oil pick-up.

2) I don't see enough signs of a vcg leak to warrant a change yet, assuming the rear matches the front. The front is not hard but the rear is tedious to get at.

3) The oil-fill baffle is always hot and traps and then cooks oil that splashes up there. You can't take anything you see on it as indicative of anything underneath. I have seen some people just cut it off when they had the front VC off so as to both avoid this, as well as see the cam and valve train condition. But then you loose the protection of the baffle, which is (I think) to prevent oil loss if the fill cap is left off or fails and comes off.

4) Also, there's no metric to judge if being a 1/4 qt low is meaningful. If it's after 500 miles of being right at the full mark, it's interesting. OTOH, mine is 1/4 qt. low when I change the oil - I usually just put in 5 qts from the Walmart container and call it good (it takes 5 1/4 to exactly match the "F" line). Since it only drops about 1/2 qt every 5k miles, I don't worry about having right at the "f" at an oil change.