Okay so a while ago I fired up my Alfa Romeo 1.7 16v engine and it sounded like this:



I've finally gotten around to stripping the offside cylinder head, and found the oil to be full of this sticky, gunky, lumpy stuff. I also note that the engine is absolutely filled with instant gasket on every conceivable surface possible. Not applied in a thin manor either, it's been applied by squeezing directly out of the tube onto the gaskets I think! As such, I'm presuming that the sticky weird stuff in the oil is instant gasket.

Now, luckily, it was only the offside cylinder head that was making this noise, and upon stripping it indeed some of the tappets were full of this gunk. I've taken the cylinder head off and all of the inlet valve guides were worn, so those have been replaced, the head has been decoked and skimmed etc. I've stripped, cleaned and reassembled all of the hydraulic tappets.

I'm going to remove the nearside cam cover and remove clean out all of the tappets (take the tappet out, take the hydraulic piston out, split the piston and clean it out, clean the valve out, reassemble), but I don't want to remove the head if I can avoid it. I'm also going to remove the sump and throughly clean it out, and remove the oil pump and clean that. I don't particularly want to start pulling conrod caps and cleaning oil holes in bearings etc. but does anybody think this is necessary?

My plan is to clean all this out, replace all the gaskets, change the filter, fill it with fresh oil and a flushing product, run it up to temp for 10 mins or so, drop the oil again, change the filter and fill with fresh oil.

Anything else anybody thinks I need do or any advice?

Many thanks,

Adam

[Edited on 6/9/17 by computid]

Afraid it's got to come apart completely

Someone has used something that is not resilient to oil, I expect the sump has been stuck on with it.

Think they will have used standard silicon not RTV gasket sealant.

Standard silicone is well known for dissolving and finishing up like snot. Blocks carbs, fuel lines and anything else it gets into apparently. Horrible stuff. Needs fully cleaning out. Bad news.

Strip it and clean up/out everything, That stuff can get everywhere