Howdy guys. Among other things, I decided to pull the oil pan to replace the gasket on my LN3. This is my oil pickup screen after 170k miles. I've owned it since 133k miles or so and have changed it on time with name brand oil and AC Delco PF52 filters. Have been using Mobil 1 since 153k miles, and Mobil 7500 for quite a while before that (4500 mile oil changes with Mobil, and 2500 mile oil changes with conventional oil before that).

I'm thinking that I should suggest pulling the pan with higher mileage 3800s. My oil pressure was fine, no bad noise, etc, but this doesn't look good.

My bad

My guess is the previous owner did not keep up on oil changes and used cheap oil.

YIKES! Woah!! How hard is it to do this? I really have no experience with the bottom ends of engines.... :? But mine is nearing 150k so it must be getting somewhat funky being that it held the same oil for 7 years.

At least my motor'* still pretty tight.

It'* not bad. Disconnect the oil level sensor, couple bolts for the plastic flywheel cover, one more bolt for the bracket for that cover, then the pan bolts themselves. Pretty straightforward. The premium Felpro gaslet from Advance was $33 or so and comes with the tiny gasket for the pickup tube in the pan. The tube comes out with two 8mm head bolts. The plastic cover and bracket use 10mm, pan bolts are 13mm. Actually there'* a couple bolts under the timing cover that are like 3/8''. I'm convinced the LN3 still has a few SAE thread/size bolts here and there. Anyway, yeah, it'* pretty simple and doesn't take long.

For the pan, I wiped it out, then sloshed some diesel fuel in it, then did some more wiping. Haven't put it back yet. I'll try to wipe down everything I can in the bottom end with a fresh rag before putting the pan and everything back. I did remove the oil pressure sensor and reinstalled it with some Rector Seal (teflon based liquid sealant we use in plumbing, aka "dope").

If you have been keeping up with oil changes you should'nt worry much, I dropped the oil pan for the first time at 200k and it wasn't plugged.

I'd like to quell this for future people searching.

That picture is not normal for ANY mileage. Looks to me, that there was something in the past and possible overheating etc.

At 170K on mine and much more on others.. I haven't seen this to ever occur before on any engine.

I agree. I did my Oil pan Gasket/filter at around 179K or so miles and it looked like this: