Oil into coiolant
04-04-2010, 09:31 PM
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Oil into coiolant
I posted this at the end of an overheat thread a week ago got no response whatsoever. But there's a follow up anyway
my 98 triton 4.6 is sucking oil into the coolant system. I bought the truck at Christmas and a few weeks later noticed it suddenly lost 4 1/2 quarts of oil. No smoke, No visible leaks, Ive never seen this before. BUT I neglected to even look at the coolant reservoir. Since then it was fine. That is until today I warmed up the truck for an extended period of time more than the usual 3 minutes because I was swapping equipment onto the ladder racks and tying off scaffolding. About 20-25 minutes later I take off, all gauges normal. I get about a mile from my house and hear a whistling. No steam. just what sounds like a piccolo. Thought it was wind whistling through the scaffold plank. All gauges are normal I go another 3/4 mile and the engine stumbles and goes into limp mode. I pull into a strip mall parking lot and all hell breaks loose. The temp gauge is spiked and foam and sand colored cream it bursting out of the reservoir. This is not good. I now know where my oil went, I check the dipstick and its dry. My wife comes a half hour later with 5 quarts of oil and 5 gallons of anti freeze. It takes four quarts of oil in the crankcase and two gallons of anti freeze into the reservoir but i cant figure out how to bleed out the air pocket that is in the top hose. There is no foam on the dipstick or oil filler cap. I would expect anti freeze to get into the oil and not oil into the anti freeze. One being higher pressure than the other. Could I have a cracked oil feed galley into the water jacket? Or is this a head gasket or intake issue? It never lost oil pressure even when temp spiked. I don't have $3500 for a complete rebuilt engine. Is this common with the triton 4.6?
Follow up. After I posted this I flushed the cooling system as best I could by removing the upper hose at the radiator, I blew out as much of the creamy gunk as wall as running some dish detergent through it and running it. Drained it again and filled it with 50/50 and checked the oil. It didn't lose any oil since I got stranded and added (see above) plus no evidence of antifreeze/coolant/water on dipstick or filler cap.
I suspected head gasket but mechanic said (last weekend) that he suspected it was the gasket at the block to oil filter/lower hose connection as they share the same gasket. Which made sense to me, However he calls me again Tuesday to say he now thinks its the head gasket specifically at number one cylinder. As his mechanic co-workers disagree on his original diagnosis. I have now continued to drive this truck for a week with my eye on the engine temp which hasn't budged above the lower third of the gage. Oil pressure is in the 3/4 of gauge region. And there is no ticking or knocking or any other bearing related noise coming from the engine. Since i NEED to get a whole lotta work done in the next two weeks I have put off the head gasket change till the last weekend in April. I am still baffled as to how oil got into the anti freeze and not vice versa. I am treading very lightly on the pedal to try and keep cylinder pressure and oil pressure from not spiking. As I have seen a correlation between that and the last two "events". I now have a Hanes manual which doesn't exactly encourage me. Alot of cautions and fore-warnings and caveats. These things aint as simple as the small block Chevy's from back in the day. What a PITA to work on.
Thoughts?
Ideas?
Similar Experiences?
my 98 triton 4.6 is sucking oil into the coolant system. I bought the truck at Christmas and a few weeks later noticed it suddenly lost 4 1/2 quarts of oil. No smoke, No visible leaks, Ive never seen this before. BUT I neglected to even look at the coolant reservoir. Since then it was fine. That is until today I warmed up the truck for an extended period of time more than the usual 3 minutes because I was swapping equipment onto the ladder racks and tying off scaffolding. About 20-25 minutes later I take off, all gauges normal. I get about a mile from my house and hear a whistling. No steam. just what sounds like a piccolo. Thought it was wind whistling through the scaffold plank. All gauges are normal I go another 3/4 mile and the engine stumbles and goes into limp mode. I pull into a strip mall parking lot and all hell breaks loose. The temp gauge is spiked and foam and sand colored cream it bursting out of the reservoir. This is not good. I now know where my oil went, I check the dipstick and its dry. My wife comes a half hour later with 5 quarts of oil and 5 gallons of anti freeze. It takes four quarts of oil in the crankcase and two gallons of anti freeze into the reservoir but i cant figure out how to bleed out the air pocket that is in the top hose. There is no foam on the dipstick or oil filler cap. I would expect anti freeze to get into the oil and not oil into the anti freeze. One being higher pressure than the other. Could I have a cracked oil feed galley into the water jacket? Or is this a head gasket or intake issue? It never lost oil pressure even when temp spiked. I don't have $3500 for a complete rebuilt engine. Is this common with the triton 4.6?
Follow up. After I posted this I flushed the cooling system as best I could by removing the upper hose at the radiator, I blew out as much of the creamy gunk as wall as running some dish detergent through it and running it. Drained it again and filled it with 50/50 and checked the oil. It didn't lose any oil since I got stranded and added (see above) plus no evidence of antifreeze/coolant/water on dipstick or filler cap.
I suspected head gasket but mechanic said (last weekend) that he suspected it was the gasket at the block to oil filter/lower hose connection as they share the same gasket. Which made sense to me, However he calls me again Tuesday to say he now thinks its the head gasket specifically at number one cylinder. As his mechanic co-workers disagree on his original diagnosis. I have now continued to drive this truck for a week with my eye on the engine temp which hasn't budged above the lower third of the gage. Oil pressure is in the 3/4 of gauge region. And there is no ticking or knocking or any other bearing related noise coming from the engine. Since i NEED to get a whole lotta work done in the next two weeks I have put off the head gasket change till the last weekend in April. I am still baffled as to how oil got into the anti freeze and not vice versa. I am treading very lightly on the pedal to try and keep cylinder pressure and oil pressure from not spiking. As I have seen a correlation between that and the last two "events". I now have a Hanes manual which doesn't exactly encourage me. Alot of cautions and fore-warnings and caveats. These things aint as simple as the small block Chevy's from back in the day. What a PITA to work on.
Thoughts?
Ideas?
Similar Experiences?
04-07-2010, 04:53 PM
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Yea i had a small block 350 with a similar story. i was finding oil in my coolant resivor. Well that oil in the coolant resivoir doesnt keep the engine cool. One day driving home i overheated it pulled over and was still able to drive it home. No coolant got into the oil imediatly but after running it then the coolant showed up in to oil. so took it to a friend and took it apart and replaced the air intake gaskets and head gaskets. got the heads resurfaced and dropped a pill in to the radiator that supose to seal small leaks. ran fine after that but cant tell you long term becasue i sold it soon after.
