well, all my jobs have been done at the dealer, so go figure.

he says sludge, who knows. its like bull riding in a crystal shop in there, i swear.

and mine's an 01, and i do extend my oil changes - meaning i usually just go off the indicator lights for service instead of changing at regular mileage intervals.... yeah yeah, spare me the lesson. i know better.

What is the symptom on your X that indicates sludge?

couple of reasons. one primarily that i hear the engine kinda choking. when idling, its muscles like a mustang, so to speak. then also, on acceleration, the sound of my engine is not as crisp as it was before. it has that heavy chug sound. not super loud, but compared to when i got it.

there prolly are other fixes, i'd imagine - maybe fuel injector, sparkies, etc.

oh, and of course the mechanic friend. told me there was sludge. now before you say anything, he said he'll do it for me at my next oil change - charge me $15 bucks for the 'marina green (SP?)' - some type of sludge remover.

Someone please explain to me how you know it cleans your valley pan, oil sump etc..... without tearing the engine apart. IMO additives cover up a problem not fix it, cleaners do work .....kinda of..... but there is no way in the world I'd put pine sol in my engine and turn it over!!!!! Do what you want but ...... ike301 hit the nail on the head.

Ike....if you're mechanically inclined, why don't you just open it up to verify if you have sludge or not.

Moreso, are you the original owner or is this is used. Maint. records ?

The ONLY product I would recommend is www.auto-rx.com but beforeso, I would probably lean on opening it up myself to see how dirty it is.....or decide yourself based on past service maintainence.

nope. mechanically challenged. i only know how to do it on hondas. back in the day, at least.

thanks for the link.

Still wondering if anyone has experienced sludging besides ike? I just bought my 2001 4.4 from a friend who bought it at 32k. I saw the maint and saw oil was changed at the dealer as required in the lease. Now it has 56k and I am the proud owner. I was just curious because I own an Audi A4 which is known to sludge, but mine has 157k and no worries.

get a new mechanic.

I believe sludge happens when you don't do in between oil changes. I had a previous post about this. I even had pics to back up what I was explaining. Either way, my mechanic had this one customer, he brought his Bmw 540 03 in because his engine was not running right. At the end of this problem, to make a long story short. My mechanic opened the engine and to see all this sludge, grime, basically SH&T! in the engine. This guy did only every 10 to 15k oil changes. My point here is if you do in between oil, and the X is not running with oil past 5k to7k then there shouldn't be any sludge in the engine. But like I said before. I flush my engine every other oil change or even every 3rd, whatever it really doesn't matter much, this stuff will not harm anything.

That sounds reasonable. I ran all of my inline 6 bimmers all the way to 15k miles without a peep and all over 150k miles. I think I will take your advice with the 4.4 and do them every 7,000. With all that I am reading about the transmission that seems like a larger worry.