Just did the valve covers, glad to see the inside was spotless. No sludge at all.

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i need to do the same, i have some seeping...
how long did it take?

 

and how many miles do you have on your engine?

 

looks quite clean... im scared to take mine off... lol. afraid of what i might see in there. (or might not see...)

 

what brand and weight of oil do you use?

 

Wow, you aren't kidding......that is about the cleanest 5VZ-FE I have seen with any miles on it.
Good job on doing the head gaskets yourself.

Judging from the amount of rust on the engine components it looks like you live some place warm and dry.

 

I use Castrol GTX 10W-30. I have torn down engines that ran Castrol and they were always clean. It took about 3 hours to do both sides. The passenger side is easy. You just take the intake tubing off. The driver's side requires removal of the upper intake. It comes off in 2 pieces.

I have 73,943 miles. I remember cause I just did an oil change LOL.

I live in San Antonio and the previous owner lived in Houston, so it rarely sees any salt. I may take it to Chicago this year though.

 

Nice!!

I have some pretty bad oil leakage right now, and am going to start from the top, and work my way down since there is just so much oil, I have no idea where its starting. It looks like its up there though.

I run Castrol GTX (10w-30) as well, I've always ran it, and its been great. I had close to 300k on my last 4runner. I switched to Synthetics and decided I to switch back to dyno.

 

I did mine at 140k and my engine was nice and clean like that too. I use the 5w-30 oil from our dealership (I think it's Unical 76 brand) and a Toyota filter and change it every 3-5k miles. It took about 2 hours to and is not that hard to do. I changed the PCV valve while I was at it too.

 

You must change your oil regularly
Thats a good thing

 

Do regular auto-parts stores have the PCV valve?

 

yeah it is like $6.99. The only thing to watch for is on the driver's side there is a wiring harnes that is inside a plastic housing. It runs behind the timing cover up across the valve cover and sits on top of the valve cover. When I pulling the valve cover off, you have to move that harness out of the way. The plastic was brittle and shattered into the head. I spent an hour checking to make sure there were no fragments in the engine. Best way to avoid this is to wrap the entire plastic housing in electrical tape before removing the valve cover.

 

Those plastic wire loom protectors are on both sides of the engine between the valve cover and the intake manifold.
They do become very brittle over time so it does pay to wrap them in tape first.

 

Wow, good thing to note!!

 

I second that , but can I remember it hmmmmmmmmmmmmm