Lude Generation

I've only just bought my prelude; only driven it once :/
Seemed to drive nice. I checked the oil and it was black, looked in the filler cap and it was sludgy. So I parked it up and decide to change the oil when I got some spare time. OK so here's where I potentially screwed up. I flushed it. Now I know (after a fair bit of reading) that the general opinion is to not flush, but as I've seen good results with previous cars (in particular an Audi that had a noisy cam variator on start up; flushing cured it.) I went ahead.
So flushed it, drained it, fresh oil and filter, started it up and now there's a loud clatter. I figured it would go away after a few seconds when the oil pressure built up, it didn't.
I've run it twice for about 20 seconds.
It's very loud but I can't tell if it's coming from the cams or the bottom end.
I don't know what to do for the best now.
I knew there was a risk but I didn't expect this.
Car is a 5th gen 1999 2.2 vti
Call me names if you want (I've certainly called myself a few tonight) but does anyone have any suggestions as to how to move forward?

What did you flush it with?

Diesel, it's what I've used in the past (in fairness most commercial engine flush products are kerosene anyway) . Dropped a litre of oil out, poured a litre of diesel in, idled the engine for a couple of minutes and then dropped the oil out. New oil and filter, started it and now there's a loud clattering. If anything it sounds like the cams but I can't tell.

stinkypaul wrote:Diesel

Never heard of that before.
I would empty it out and put some fresh oil in. 10W-40

Done that. Going to start it up tomorrow. It was late when I finished 10pm and I didn't want to disturb the neighbours
I'll report back

Jeez. Never heard of diesel to flush out an engine. Best of luck though.

Already heard of it and I was wondering if anybody ever had problems doing it. This is the first time I read this kind of story.
Can't blame you cause you wanted to do things good ! IMO if there is any kind of stuffs accumulated in an engine (carbon, metal) I prefer them staying were they are instead of making them circulate in the engine.

I have heard of people using diesel instead of engine flush, it used to be quite common - I don't know if it's a good idea with modern engines to use diesel instead of 'pukka' engine flush though?

I've always been sceptical about engine flushing, but last year I flushed the B20A7 in my 3g and the H22A in Lisa's 4g, both of which were run for longer than a couple of minutes with the flush in (can't remember how long, but I followed the instructions). No bad results to report, so the engines can definitely take it.

Might be that something has been disturbed and blocked an oil gallery? (that's always the horror story, though I don't know how common it actually is...)

How many miles are on your engine?
Whereabouts are you? Might be a forum member nearby that's familiar with H22's and can take a listen for you?

It might be worth giving it a flush with pukka engine flush?

I'm near castleford. I'll take another look tonight.
Thanks for the suggestion, but having someone listen probably won't help. It's very loud and not obvious where it's from. It's sounds like the cam followers have no oil, but if it's not that then I would say it's spun a bearing. It sounds that bad.

In fairness I wish my situation before buying the car had been better and I wouldn't have gone down this path. I think that if you have to consider flushing as remedial action then you have an engine in trouble, and I think maybe the one I bought was in a bad way and I've just sent it over the edge. Shame really as its only done 95k and I was hoping to restore it and enjoy it for a couple of years.

I'll report back tonight.

Yep, 95k is nothing for an h22. Although as with anything, if it's not been looked after/regularly serviced, that's irrelevant of course!