Can a blow head gasket introduce oil into coolant system?

[damac]

Can a blown head gasket introduce oil into coolant system?

Sorry but I am no techie and my searches haven't helped much.

Basically the coolant system has been clear of oil for a couple thousand miles, since we serviced the oil cooler after we picked up this clunker a few months ago.

We installed a manual oil gage at that time and readings have matched other posts on this forum both before and after an incident we had last week.

Truck pulling our regular moderate load on the freeway, oil pressure dropped, there was a slight runaway along with blue smoke and a tapping type of noise sounding like it came from the exhaust.

Truck was pulled over, found to be low on oil, a few quarts were replaced and the truck then acted like normal with that load for another couple hundred miles. Truck was also driven once 150 miles empty. No signs of this incident again. Truck is easy to start, no real smoke beyond startup and stomping on the gas which makes it black.

Oil slick is now in the coolant system like a chunky milkshake. Some kind of material is ground up like gasket material, is it possible this is the head gasket?

Also is it possible my cdr is bad and allowed the truck to runaway and lift it just enough to have it eat away and push oil/bits into the coolant system?

I ordered a new cdr and will cut the old one open when I get it. The intake has lots of oil in it and there are all sorts of hard chunks. I dumped this in gas after we first got the truck and replaced the fluids blindly, assuming it was good when it came out clean.

And for some reason I can't click on the tools when making this thread but here a couple links to pics of my intake and the chunks/oil on my radiator cap.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v44/kellyass/1985-f250-supercab-4x4/P2270458.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v44/kellyass/1985-f250-supercab-4x4/P2270453.jpg


Thanks for any info!

 

[Diesel JD]

A blown head gasket can definitely leak oil into the coolant. Seems like your more serious problem is that you have a crapload of blowby from worn rings. If you get too much blowby...enough to cause the engine to runaway then all that extra fuel could have lifted the head. I don't know where the chunks are coming from. This engine sounds like it needs attention asap, or you could put some stop leak in it and run it till it blows, but after having experienced a full on runaway with my truck a few years ago, just the thought of it shakes me up. I'm sure it was only divine intervention that I didn't lose that motor and no one got hurt! I'm thinking if you love this vehicle and can afford to have it down it's time to build an engine or find a good used runner or if you want to upgrade and can afford that, it's time to cut your losses and do so now.

 

[hesutton]

It could be a headgasket or something else. I'd do a compression test on that motor and pull the valve covers and see if there are any loose valves or anything else unusual there.

Heath

 

[flatlander]

I wouldn't assume that a head gasket is the cause of your oil in coolant situation. There isn't oil pressure in the locations where oil and coolant can get together in the head. Have you drained the oil and seen if there's coolant in the oil?

 

[87crewdually]

I'd suspect oil coler failure or cooler gasket failure before head gasket. The head gasket has the oil drain down port which is just that a drain, no pressure. Now if the case was the other way around, antifreeze in the oil then a head gasket could be culprit.

You must be registered for see images attach

The far left 2 holes: upper hole is for a stud, while the lower is the oil drain. In this gasket failure water was creaping in the oil drain hole from the lower jacket port. The upper jacket port suffered from boost bleed over past the fire ring and deformed the rubber seal.

 

[Raiden7800]

I would also suggest oil cooler. If it is a clunker, chances are it got there due to lack of maintainence.

My thoughts:

Not changing the coolant for a long time causes an electrical charge to buildup in the coolant itself. This erodes away at metal.

In this case, if it is the cooler, it is likely because the ends of the cooler are aluminum. Aluminum erodes away faster than cast-iron. Internal failure of the cooler due to electrolysis is a very real possibility. Oil pressure is higher than coolant pressure, so little to no coolant would get into the oil while the engine was running, and would continue to be that way until the truck was shut off and oil pressure dropped below that of the cooling system pressure.

How do I know about the electrolysis?

My '84 blew a hole in the coolant side of the heat exchanger going down the freeway one night. It wasnt a rock that flew under the exhaust manifold and hit it... the aluminum eroded away from the inside, had to tig it up to replace the missing aluminum.

Might be worth a look, the cooler is pretty easy to get off anyways.

Gasket for the cooler is less than $6 at autozone, though it will likely need to be ordered. When I bought mine, there was only 1 in stock at any auto parts store on the west coast from Canada to San Francisco, and it was in Keizer, OR.

Lucky eh?

~Rob~

 

[damac]

1. Besides the actual incident the truck is still acting "normal" to me at the mechanical oil gage. So if the oil cooler breached enough to allow exchange and bits of the gasket broke apart, is it even possible for it to build backup steady 40+ pressure at times???

2. Considering we serviced the oil cooler a few months ago and have had 2,000+ miles without exchange, is it realistic to expect to reuse the new orings on reinstall if they have not been cut?

 

[Raiden7800]

1. Besides the actual incident the truck is still acting "normal" to me at the mechanical oil gage. So if the oil cooler breached enough to allow exchange and bits of the gasket broke apart, is it even possible for it to build backup steady 40+ pressure at times???

Yes, all it takes is a small pinhole for leakage to occur, and it doesn't take much oil to turn that coolant into mud. It may not be the gasket that broke, my situation was slightly different, but the gasket was intact. The rupture occurred on the sealing surface next to the gasket, but the gasket itself was fine.

2. Considering we serviced the oil cooler a few months ago and have had 2,000+ miles without exchange, is it realistic to expect to reuse the new orings on reinstall if they have not been cut?

Define "Serviced" please.

If you are going to take it off anyways, you may as well get new gaskets/o-rings, they aren't expensive, and if you order them in advance, you can have everything on hand to take it apart, and put it back together. I am sure you could get away with it, but my opinion is one-time use only. Re-use at your discretion.

~Rob~

 

[NJKen]

That looks more like soot on the radiator cap or a mix of oil and soot. You could have bigger problems here than you think. It looks like a lot of your oil is going rite into the intake through the CDR valve. This could be where your oil is going.
Ken

 

[RLDSL]

If your intake manifold is not proper;y torqued, oil and coolant can cross there easily. They can cross at the head gasket depending on where it decides to creep.

 

[damac]

I am going to go and try and find a coolant pressure tester and a compression gage but I found some other things. I was just trying to piece together the puzzle before I blindly yank everything apart.

1. There has been coolant loss during this incident and the 300 or so miles it was driven after, since it was topped off before the trip and the reservoir is low now.

2. I did the cold crank oil drainage thing and I saw no hint of coolant coming out of the oil pan first, nor mixing as I let it all drain. Oil is black as can be.

3. After I warmed up the truck and drove it I noticed the oil has little bubbles in it at the dipstick and oil pan. Never seen that before.

4. I cut apart my old cdr. Bladder seems intact although its very rough to the touch like a crusty old grommet. On this one if I tried to blow on the little hole to actuate it I had to do this very hard. Can't tell if the action is smooth or complete. The new cdr is really easy to blow into and make it actuate. No clue if that means anything.

5. When starting I cannot say that it was harder to crank over, started within a handfull of revolutions. No knocking or anything. Just a hint of white smoke on startup followed by some darker smoke, then no smoke while idling in sub 40 temps. If I stab on the throttle there is some dark smoke, not pitch black, which I have never seen on the truck. I also placed a shop towel on the exhaust and I didn't really catch any coolant or oil during startup.

6. After warmup and I was driving around town the oil gage read around 40 on the gas, and it dips when you come to a stop.

 

[RLDSL]

Get a combustion gas leak detector. It's a dye you put in a tube you hold over the rad opening after the thing is up to temp with the thermostat open( may need to put a piece of cardboard in front of the rad to heat it up) if there are any combustion gasses present in the coolant it will change from blue to a yellow/green. Have to hold it on for a few minutes diesels are hard to register, but those things are extremely sensitive are will discover blown head gaskets that compression tests and coolant system pressure testers show as good.
About $50 from Napa and $75 at snap on for a better 2 chamber one that eliminates the chance of coolant contamination

 

[damac]

1. Below is me looking at blowby after a 20 minute warmup on the driveway. I also have a brand new cdr assembly installed now. How does it look?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3s5YkdlFJ8g

2. I hooked up a coolant pressure tester today before first cold start. Noticed no real spikes on the gage throughout. After 10 or so minutes it was at about 9 pounds at the gage. After about 20+ minutes it reached radiator cap pressure of 13 pounds. I left it hooked up for a bit more and it was still slowly increasing. At this point thermostat is still closed.

I left it all hooked up under pressure after I turned the truck off and in less than an hour it leaked down to 0 at the gage!

3. In the video below I was looking toward the front of the engine from underneath the passenger side. Is this blowby where the exhaust meets the head?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cGiukC_B07A

4. I drained the oil out after a short run and let it all drip out for a while. I measured it and I got a bit over 8 quarts so it did something with the oil even shortly after the incident in that it was only driven about 300 miles after being topped off.


I am not done, I have a combustion gas tester coming later, and I just got a compression tester and I plan on doing this after a good thrashing of the truck to get it warmed up. I cleaned the cooling system out and added water, and will check for exhange after a good warmup run.

 

[87crewdually]

Maybe I missed it but: did you do a compression check yet?
is it losing coolant?
Also there is a chance too that the water pump/timing cover plate is deteriated and coolant is getting into the oil that way.

 

[damac]

I took the truck on a warmup drive today, came home, took all the glowplugs out and did the compression test. I also noticed that when I tried a previous cyclinder later to double check I got the same readings?

So this is me in front of the vehicle looking towards the engine, starting at cylinder closest to me and working my towards the back of the engine/truck.

Left side.
380
440
420
400

Right side.
410
400
395
420


During my warmup drive around town the thermostat didn't even get a chance to open up so I would like to take it on another harder test run(its empty) and see whats up with the oil in the coolant.

On my freeway runs it was getting up to about 40 psi for the oil, 170 degrees for the water.

No real smoke from the tailpipe. I can see the slightest haze when I get up close. When full throttle on the freeway I have no smoke trail. When jumping on it after a stop sign, just little darker colored smoke, never seen black from this truck.


Also I am ashamed of this but it looks like niether of us followed through and cleaned the valley/bolt when we were back there initially. It was so thick it was blocking the 2 closest glowplug ports. I found bolts and springs and mudd and leaves. I cleaned it all up and cleared the drain so everything would run. Could blocking this drain directly lead to any problems?