[Greg Reimer 7376]

That stuff looked just like the picture I saw. When I was in jr college going through the automotive program,around 1972 or 3, one of the school employees bought a very clean 64-65 Thunderbird,390,45000 or so miles, but it smoked profusely. Seems the oil had practically never been changed. When we guys in the shop pulled a valve cover, about a pint of very black oil fell out onto the exhaust manifolds. There was so much sludge in there that the oil couldn't drain back into the pan,so it apparently went by the valve guides. We took off the rocker arm shafts,push rods, the return tray, and made a scraper out of a spoon. It took hours to clean the tops of those heads, and to use a welding rod to open up the return holes. We went ahead and pulled the intake, put it in a hot tank with the valve covers and let it cook over a weekend, and the entire lifter valley looked like someone broke open a bag of charcoal briquets,mixed them with oil, and smashed them down into the valley.We dug it out, found the valley tray, threw it into the tank,and spent more hours excavating the sludge out of there, and washed the whole thing out with clean solvent.We probably should have dropped the pan and changed the screen,but it seemed to drain OK with the pan plug out. We cleaned it up, reassembled the engine, new oil and filter, and it ran fine. Some years later, he was still driving that car after all that, and it was fine. Scary to think of that mess.