Mahzdah

I was changing the coolant EXACTLY how the service manual says to. I was draining it and took out the plug and out gushed this oilly looking substance. So we let it drain and the flush it out with water. After the nasty gunk comes out it starts to turn green and light green and then clear. I let it drip dry. Get in turn on the heater and the car and start to fill the coolant. I noticed the engine oil light came on and didnt know why. The oil had been changed 2 weeks prior and had been driven once. I checked the dipstick before this incident and it was perfect color. I checked it 10 minutes ago and the dipstick was dry. I dont know what the **** is going on, im really irratated right now. I should have just taken it to a rotor mechanic. Any ideas or questions? I need help

veedubbed

If you blew an outer coolant seal, oil and water could mix in the pan, but you would have to try pretty hard to blow an outer seal. Nextly, even if you did, the coolant sucking up all the oil is pretty strange. Not really even possible unless you store your car parked upside down.


I would drain your coolant and oil, then refill both and hope for the best.

Delphince

Theories and speculation to the cause aside, the fact is the oil pan was full and now isn't, and the coolant should be just green but it was filled with the missing oil. How 3 or 4 quarts of oil could have fit into an already-full coolant system is beyond me, but that gets into speculation again. At any rate, the fact that the oil went from A to B at all is not a good sign. You can try filling things back up and run it for a few minutes to see if you get any intermixing again and pray you just have a really evil sibling--but chances are, somwhere, somehow, you've got a blown seal and that means a rebuild. I don't have to tell you No Smoke isn't going to fix it.

I've never read the manual for a coolant change, but I'd never have run the car while it was still empty. The system is pretty good at burping itself as long as you keep the cap off the top. Still, from the sounds of it the seal was already broken when you took out the plug in the first place. The details of the timing as you mentioned it makes that sound monumentally improbable, but I don't see any fault on your part from what you've written so far since you began basically with 'it was broke when I started'.

Edit:Starting to theorize, but maybe if you had an outer seal that was just hanging on to life and you drained the coolant while the engine was hot, the temperature differential might have opened up a fissure, but still that wouldn't explain how the oil was already there when you took out the plug, so I doubt it very much. Besides, like veedubbed said, that would defy gravity so the engine would have to be running for oil pressure to shoot oil into the coolant instead of coolant draining into the oil.

Hmm, but wait:
How much "before" are we talking here?

Craiger

iTrader: (1)

The oil comeing out first doesn't make any sense either cause oil is lighter than the coolent mix and should make its way to the top of the system, not sit at the bottom.

That aside, you didn't take off any of your oil and coolent hoses reciently and then possibly put them back on incorrectly? That would be the only way I could see large amounts of oil making its way to the coolent passages because even if an outer coolent seal blew I would expect you would find more coolent in the oil pan rather than the otherway around.

The Shaolin

iTrader: (5)

lol

What oil and coolant hoses are you going to mix?

If you could somehow manage that (impossible to do on accident, none of the hoses are remotely close to the same) your engine would be fucked in a hurry.

Mahzdah

oops... I forgot to mention that i was changing it with my brother and hes a helicopter mechanic. I went inside and came out and there was oil drained,. Well i just realized that the "coolant plug" we were taking off was the oil cooler radiator plug... And then we drained the oil and the coolant everything is fine and it warks better. Sorry for being a dumb a s s but... Thanks for your responses.

Craiger

iTrader: (1)

Haha... I guess I shouldn't post right before I go to bed.

Now that I think about it, it wasn't a rotary I saw with lines crossed it was an SR20.

Glad to see you sorted out what it was.