small amount of sludge

[Shawn]

Getting small amount of sludge under oil cap.
Car has a lot of short drives.
Could this be the problem, or cracked cylinder head?

 

[Shawn]

Its a 95 sl1 with 183,000 klms
Runs excellent

 

[BANDIT2941]

Getting small amount of sludge under oil cap.

Car has a lot of short drives.
Could this be the problem, or cracked cylinder head?

How often has the oil been changed? Sludge usually results from not changing
oil enough. There are engine flushes that will fix this(that are basically
composed of kerosene). I used a flush and some straight kerosene on a friends
Hyundai that hadn't had the oil changed in 80k miles or so.....there was so
much sludge couldn't even put oil in as the hole was plugged!

 

[Steve Barker]

It's merely from not being warmed up fully and regularly. Take it out on
the highway for at least 30 minutes at least once a week. Otherwise all the
condensation doesn't get boiled out of the crankcase.

 

[Laurent Doiron]

I have SL1 1994, like to once a year , use GUNK MOTOR FLUSH. This takes all
the garbage out of my motor. Pour it in and run for 5 minutes. Flush out and
change oil. This year I had to do it differently. I usualy use castrol
syntec oil 10W30. This time I flushed it with gunk changed the oil replaced
with cheap oil, had a good run with it and changed it again for fully
synthetic again. It had been a year since my last oil change. Now the oil is
sparkling and motor runs just fine again. Maybe this is all it needs, to be
flush out real good then put whatever oil you usually use. Hope it helps

 

[Philip Nasadowski]

Getting small amount of sludge under oil cap.
Car has a lot of short drives.
Could this be the problem, or cracked cylinder head?

You sure you've got a Saturn and not a Toyota?

In any case, sound like the car needs to be driven out on the highway a
LOT more. Short drives are bad for cars - they never really get up to
temperature and don't burn the crud out of the crank case.