I took the upper plenum off to test/clean my fuel injectors and lo and behold, there's some weird gunk in the 3rd and 4th cylinder intake ports. Is it oil? Bad valves? Perhaps a head gasket issue allowing oil into the cylinder?
The 1st and 2nd cylinder ports have a little carbon buildup, but that's normal right?






I also found what looks to be the lower intake manifold gasket without any bolts. Is that normal?

 

Carb (22r) and EFI (22re) share cylinder head design.

Carb and EFI, do not share intake design.

Easiest for the gasket supplier to just make one gasket that fits both patterns..

Looks like oil and water from here.

 

my intake gasket is the same on my 91.

no input to your sludge in the manifold, sorry.

 

The second to last image shows the source of the contamination...

(Top right corner)

 

excuse my ignorance, but what is that? It's just a tube coming out of the valve cover

 

pcv system, it vents the crankcase.. It will look like that when it sucks in moisture thru the front hose that leads to the air box, also when there is another source of water into the oiling system..

Could be nothing important, or catastrophic.. You'll need to inspect the oil from the pan, and maybe pull the valve cover.

 

When I removed my intake recently (1990 22re) there was plenty of carbon buildup, but no watery-oily sludge. I agree it looks like the same sludge inside the PCV hose. Since that hose attaches to the back of the upper intake plenum, it would make sense that you're only seeing it in #3 and 4 lower intake passages. I second pulling the valve cover to get a visual on your oil. It's easier than trying to drain some from the pan, unless you planned to change the oil anyway.