This thing is going to be the death of me.



The engine has just a few thousand miles on it. It purrs like a kitten.
No symptoms at all, other than what you see here.

I talked to my go-to FE buddy, and he said:
Most likely one of the oil galleries that runs from the cam bearings to the top of the block deck is cracked near the water jacket. The fix is to press a push rod in the gallery.

I was already planning on pulling the engine over the winter to replace the rear main seal...but i hadn't planned on a teardown.

Is there any chance this is transmission fluid? this radiator has the tranny cooler in the bottom.

looking for any and all suggestions
thanks

 

It's possible, when ATF is contaminated with coolant it turns a milky brown just like oil, so it could be oil or ATF.

 

pressurize the coolant line in the rad look for bubbles. pressurize the rad and look for green in oil.

 

If you're going to pull the engine anyway, do this:

With the water pump off, and the pan full of oil, run the oil pump with a drill counter-clockwise. Hopefully using a pressure gauge, run it like that for as long as you can before the drill gets too hot

If you really do have a cracked oil galley, the oil will be noticeable in the water jacket SOMEWHERE.

Also, these FE's feed oil to the rocker shaft through a port in the head - meaning if the head gasket is leaking, there's a chance that the oil feed can push oil into the water jacket...

 

I'd first test the radiator tranny cooler internal line. You could plug one side pump some air in with about 15 psi, look for bubbles in coolant in rad cap opening. Or take the rad to a shop for cleaning & testing an repair as needed... orich

 

mine did the same.
it was the oil galley had a crack. the fix was as your buddy suggested.

the machine shop attempted to do this, without a complete disassembly.
that was a bad idea.
after i got the engine back, and in the truck. it cranked over for about 15 seconds, then seized up.

the shop ended up getting me a different engine, as it was now junk.