No direct experience with this, but it sounds like a good plan. I do know that fluorescent dyes are very persistent. You could do a "lab test". Put a small sample of the dye into, say, a quart of cheap gasser oil, mix thoroughly. Then put a spoonful of that oil into a sample amount, a quart maybe, of old (but not otherwise contaminated) coolant. Mix thoroughly. Then test that substance for the dye. That's a "proof of concept" of whether the dye from the oil would show up in the coolant if it infiltrated it.

That is at the heart of this mystery. I recall stories on the Saturn site, of people switching from that abominable GM Dex-Cool to (or from) conventional anti-freeze, and not COMPLETELY flushing out the old stuff, and as soon as the two formulations mix, weird '50s Sci-Fi movie blob substances from Neptune start gurgling around in the system. Your experience sounds eerily similar, esp. given the absence of oil loss.

One thought - just for the time being, until you get this thing figured out, I would bypass the heater cores, just to paint them out of the picture for now. You may be going through several contamination / decontamination cycles in the process of nailing this down; would simplify things a little bit, anyway, not to have to do the heaters every time.

 

That's a good idea. I'll try to make a similar proportion of dye to oil, that would be used in teh crankcase. Since it only uses 0.5oz to every 4-6quarts, my lab test would probably only use a few drops.




Nah, nice suggestion, but i've always used Fleet charge since I bought the van in 2012. The PO did use green coolant, so I doubt he knew about SCA's. The motor was a rebuild, installed only 80K before I bought it.

Also, when I leave some of the oil from the coolant in the sun, the water evaporates, and the goo turns black. It looks just like black used motor oil.

My theory is that it is motor oil... just such a small leak that I'm not detecting it on the dipstick. Maybe the coolant amplifies or swells the oil???? Let's say it leaks only 1/4 quart into the coolant every 1000 miles.... then on my roadtrip last month, I drove 13200 miles, thus contaminating my coolant with over 3 quarts of oil. It would be negligibly detected on the dipstick, and when I changed the oil three times, it would negate my previous dipstick reading.

Regardless, if the emulsifier works, then I'll change the oil cooler caps (thank goodness I had the foresight to preorder them before any problem presented itself) and see if that fixes is. If not, then the caps and oil cooler are good, then all that is left is the block, head, or HG. crap.

 

I have also heard about using dish soup to deal with oil. It can foam up pretty good and can be kind of a pain to flush out. I also heard of using products like Simple Green etc......just don't run them too long. Hope you get it figured out.

 

The diesel shop down the road actually recommended to me back when I redid my oil cooler. I also used the motorcraft clean out stuff, which he warned me sternly to make sure it was all gone.

What he did recommend more than anything is not using regular tap water to do the flushes, but instead use only distilled; when considering the gunk in tap water it makes sense.

I don't remember what my father did exactly, but when I flushed out mine, I did the dawn once, got it up to operating temperature, and ran it for 15 minutes or so, then flushed twice more with distilled. I then put the motorcraft stuff in there, and after that, flushed twice more.

My problem that I didnt' realize at the time, is that if you don't take out the block plugs on both sides, to completely drain, you get stuck with something like 2 gallons left in from prior cleaning.

 

Replace your block plugs with pet*****. it makes things a lot neater.

 

I have a Ford 340B tractor doing a similar thing...mine is combustion gas cooking the antifreeze into a pasty goo. Fill the radiator with water and start the engine, then with the radiator cap off see if the radiator level increases to the point it overflows. That's what mine is doing...with no change in any oil levels. It's a gooey mess.

 

More updates. I blew today trying to clear the oil in the coolant. I got the L-11 Oil Emulsifier. So far, I'm pretty impressed. I poured in a bottle into the radiator, and let the engine run for 30 minutes. The radiator looks pretty clean now.

I assumed that most of my oil would have accumulated at the top of the radiator. When I went to unplug my block plugs and rear coolant filter, I found lots more oil there. Kind of confounding. Oil is supposed to float on water, so why is it accumulating inside the block?

I left the plugs open, and came back after 15 minutes. About a full cup of oil dripped out of the passenger side block plug hole, and about a few tablespoons dribbled out of the driver's side. That's another weird thing... why is the passenger side so gummed up? I would think if the oil cooler was leaking, then the majority of the oil would be near the driver's side plug or radiator.

My coolant filter was 100% full of oil. It weighed probably 5 lbs. The filter housing was oozing oil. That's equally confounding, because that's one of the lowest things in teh coolant circuit, located in front of the middle fuel tank.

I have one more bottle of L-11, so after I let the block and coolant housing drip out all its oil, I'll run one more bottle of the emulsifier.

It almost doesn't pay to use the emulsifier at this point. I MUST have an oil leak still, and this probably isn't residuals. And the oil pouring out of the passenger side of the block worries me that the HG is bad there. When I drove it to stir up the emulsifier, the engine ran amazing, even after sitting for a few weeks. It started up instantly from cold. I'd think if the HG was bad, i'd have poorer performance or water in my oil.

where's that darn head-banging-wall emoticon....

 

more news. I pulled the t-stat, cuz now it won't open. While I had it off, I saw black streaks of oil. This is different than the grey goo, so I'm thinking my oil leak must be by there. This is also close to the passenger side drain block plug, which had more oily goo than anywhere else.

My theory is that the block or head or HG has a leak near there.

 

Could it be a leak between the block and the plate that covers the timing gears and the gasket and the water pump ?

 

If that was the case, wouldn't my coolant pressure push some of the coolant into my oil?

 

I would think so if coolant pressure was higher than oil pressure. If not than oil pressure would push.

 

Yes, that's true when the engine is running. But once the vehicle is shut down, the oil pressure equalizes, but the coolant system is still under pressure. So, my leak has to be in a place where oil pressure can push oil in, but not push any coolant back into the crankcase...

 

https://files.acrobat.com/a/preview/...d-43eea9d432b8


This may help