Engine Oil seen in Coolant Reservoir, How?

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Vehicle is 1993 3.8L w/186,000miles.

This morning I was looking at the Green Cooalnt through the resovoir mouth and noticed what appeared to be engine oil floating in globules on the surface.

Any takers on the most likely leak source???

Obviously I am propably going to have a UV leak test soon. So we do not get taken for a ride, what is the best Service method for diagnosing this leak?

Enough posts here have alerted me to the horrors of what coolant does to engine bearings.

The car has lasted this long trouble free. I have no desire to kill the engine.

Thanks-
 
Down and dirty way to see if a head leak exists,

Do when engine is cold..Pull radiator cap, water should be at a visable level, start engine and watch water, if water blows out of radiator, or if water moves up and down, it would indicate a head leak directly from the cyl as this is creating pressure from the cyl.

Other thing to do is after letting sit, look closley at the oil and see if water exists in the oil.

This isn't a 100% way to ensure no leak exists but... If either of those conditions exists, then you can be assured you DO have a head/head gasket problem
 
Gregg,

Nope you assumed wrong.

It is a 3800 Series I TPI General Motors vintahge 1993.

It last 10 years so far at this mileage and still has like new fuel economy,emmissions and compression. LOL all i know is the Ford 3.8 is no good. Is 10yrs and 186,000miles acceptable life for a factory head gaskets life? I have read some import internet boards and many of thier reported head gasket failures were at this mileage-age.

Do you know if thier are any "Pourable" Gasket sealer chemicals I can add to the radiator to seal the gaskets?

If I change the oil once a month in the meantime will that seriously counteract damage caused by coolant contamination in the meantime. I am expecting gasket replacement to run from 700-1000$ at least. Whereas on the other hand a remanafactured engine is 2,000$ from Jasper. Any advice?

-Outrun
 
could also be a cracked block!

As a last resort you can try the over the over the counter sealers, Prestone makes one, Barhrs . I used one recently and it seems to have worked, in another looked at a radiator replacement soon after. As a last resort maybe!
 
Outrun, don't assume the worst. As mentioned, it might be a blown headgasket or cracked head, but it may also be a leak in the timing chain area. I beleve some of the cover bolts go into the water jacket, so you may have a transfer of oil and coolant there.

Do you see bubbles in the radiator when removing the cap with the engine running? Is there an inordinant amount of white vapor coming out of the tailpipe when it is first started? If not, then maybe it won't be too hard to fix.....
 
Update:

1)To answer the above the vehicle has EGR.

2weeks ago a heater hose blew. Could such an evident have anything to with a head gasket failure?

Goodyear guy has not repaired problem but i should him the contamination of the resovoir. He thinks it is ATF. He did open the radiator cap and although my memory is fuzzy it did look like "red" droplets very cleanly in the coolant. Then again they could have been brown as well. Everyday the coolant in the resovoir is becoming progressively nasty.

However when he opened the radiator cap...the coolant looked brand new green (was mechanically flushed 6months ago & 7,000miles) with the droplets of ??? quiete clean looking.

So from the above posts the flow chart until diagnosis next week:

A)Head Gasket engine oil-coolant leak?

B)Timing Chain Oil - Coolant problem?

C)ATF - Leak in ATF integral cooler in Radiator?

Thanks for the help yall-
 
This may seem to be an off-the-wall reply, but on my Escort last year I noticed an oily film on the coolant inside the overflow reservoir, which holds roughly 2 quarts itself. After other checks I was satisfied that my head gasket was okay, and I flushed and changed the coolant reservoir.

A few weeks back I happened to check the radiator itself and found something very strange, which was probably the original source of the oily film in the reservoir. What looked like oil drops were on the surface of the coolant in the radiator neck. But on the underside of the radiator cap was a good-sized blob of black GREASE, as would be used in bearings, etc. More of it was visible in the part of the radiator neck above the coolant. When I stuck my finger in the neck, it came out coated with more of the grease. It was definitely grease, not oil sludge, and looked as if it had been smeared there, not deposited over time.

Unless someone knows of a spot inside the coolant system that is greased, my conclusion is that some mechanic somewhere decided to play a game so down the road he could talk me into a new head gasket. (The idea is that I would see "oil" in the coolant, come to him with the problem, and you know the rest.) Maybe this is what has happened to you. By the way, my Escort was 210,000 miles and I've been using Red Line 10W30 for over 100,000 of that. I have nothing but praise for Red Line.
 
Outrun, if the mechanic says it is red and looks like ATF, it probably is.

I'd like to change my diagnosis to a leaking ATF cooler in the radiator. Here's hoping a new radiator will fix it.
 
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