I've heard that these cars have sludge problems? Why? And what causes it in these cars?

How can you fix it?

What!? Really i never knew that.. For the first 30K miles on ours, we always changed the oil at 3-4K miles & used reg Dino oil, then at 30K miles, i switched her to Mobil 1 Full Syn 5W30 with the M1-104 oil filter. changed it at 33K miles, then every 5K miles from there. No sludge problems, and the oil at 5K oil changes still came out pretty clean. The engine sounds just like new, and it still sees the red line every now and then. :-D SO i would say, switch to Mobil-1 (Or any syn oil) and do 4-5K miles oil changes, That is if these engines are know for sludge......

l've never heard of any sludge problems being reported on the forums and l have not come across it myself, any engine will sludge up if the oil is not changed at the right service intervals

Well I'm the second owner of this car, and the previous owner took METICULOUS care of the car. The car even has a factory 140k mile warranty on it..

But i've talked to a few people, including carmax, and they said sludge is common on korean/japanese cars, especially the hyundais. I couldn't believe it.

The funny part is, this car runs great. Gets about 21mpg in the city w/ me lead footing it, and about 32mpg on the highway. No noises or anything from the motor. Only thing I've noticed the past 5k miles is it smokes BAD. I dont know why. But anytime you go more than part throttle it BELLOWS blue smoke.

So should I go w/ the factory weight oil, only convert to mobil one? I've heard from research that a lot of folks convert to syn mobil one and it fixed their sludge problems..

I'm not a mechanic, but I had a 2000 Dodge Neon ES with the same symptoms. Turned out to be a blown head gasket. Might get that checked out.

But it's not eating any coolant and there isn't any white smoke which would hint coolant?

Maybe you need to do a Marvel mystery oil soak or Seafoam. For the blue smoke it sounds like the oil is being pushed passed the rings and being burned. Do you burn any oil? I dont think its head gasket. I know that 2000's toyotas had really bad sludge problems.

This post has been edited by Getovait2005: Jul 20 2008, 07:28 PM

Ya toyota is infamous for it's sludge problem.

Do you think Seafoaming it would be better than putting auto-rx into the crankcase? I need to do SOMETHING about this. Yes, it certainly burns oil. I was watching my wife drive from behind one time, and if she went more than 1/8 throttle, it would POUR smoke. I'm not talking puff, it POURED it. I've never seen a car under 300k miles of neglect pour this much smoke man, and it hadn't even breached 100k yet!!!