what is in my coolant?!?! *pics*
 

ok, heres the story. the last time i drove my car, was monday nite, had a friend with a supercharged mustang who wanted to run so i brought the car out , did some pulls came back home. car ran great the whole time, no issues at all. fastforward to this morning, i start my car to let it warm up..... as i'm about to leave i go to close the garage door and notice a "pshhhhhhhhh" pressurized noise coming from the front of my car, so i look down and theres a puddle under my car. so i'm thinking oh shit, i pop the hood, this crap is just OOZING out the top of my overflow tank.....so i shut the car off and snapped some pics.

to me it looks like oil is mixed in there, its got a wierd consistency to it. the oil dipstick is clean, as is the oil filler neck. the coolant in the ast smells and looks normal as well. fwiw i run evans

ok onto the pics....

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...2/DSC00275.jpg

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...2/DSC00276.jpg

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...2/DSC00277.jpg

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...2/DSC00278.jpg

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...2/DSC00279.jpg

http://i31.photobucket.com/albums/c3...2/DSC00280.jpg

as you can see the tank is COMPLETELY full. last i had pulled the cap off of that tank was about 2 weeks ago, and there was NO sign of this brown stuff in there. my car never overheats, doesn't blow smoke, and isn't down on power. discuss......

oil

but how is it getting there??? if i had a bad coolant seal wouldn't exhaust gas be getting in there, not oil?

my other thought was my turbo is water/oil cooled

maybe.

what does your engine oil look like?

my engine oil looks completely clean, i just changed it about 2 weeks ago

maybe the evans reacted with it?
i've never used that stuf, so i wouldn't be any help with telling you what it would do when exposed to other chemicals, fluids, etc...

how long have you been running the evans?

i've ran the evans the whole time i've owned the car, the previous owner also had evans in the car when i bought it from him. so i'd say the past 3 yrs has been evans

freaky (and definitely not good)

that's a nice aluminum barf can you have there, though....where did you get it?

the shop that did most of the work to the car made it, he's pretty handy with a welder haha

blown seal somewhere...I'm assuming the turbo(s) is water cooled?

Jay, I definitly think the turbo may be a culprit here, just my $0.02

yea the turbo is oil and water cooled, so thats my only guess at this point. gt40r with MAYBE 2500 miles on it.........

those are some pretty sweet fused aluminum welds on that tank :) sorry to hear about your problem bumping in hopes to help you find the answer. as always when i talk to you tell X i say hello.

I would drain your oil and see if you notice any trace of Evans in it. Was there any smoke coming out of the exhaust while this was happening?

yea nothing coming out the exhaust at all, just the normal premix here and there and thats a pretty distinct smell.

i think at this point i'm going to pull the turbo and see what i can find there. DEFINITLY draining the coolant as i don't want any of that going thru my motor, oil will also most likely be drained before the car see's the road again too.


mono4lamar thanks for the bump i'll tell X you said hey :icon_tup:

Definitely drain the oil, as coolant-diluted oil can cause far worse problems than the oil that's already in your cooling system.

Hi I'm Juan From Puerto Rico , I'm Almost Certain That Your Problem May Be The Seal Between The Rotor Housing And The Side Housing That Has Been Broken Or Has A Nick And Its Mixing The Oil With The Water ...

what would other symptoms of this be?

It depends on which seal as it can also cause smoking out of the exhaust (which is why I asked that question). If it's an outer seal, you may not see any smoking as it won't leak anything into the combustion chamber.

you mean a coolant seal? where is that much oil coming from? the combustion chamber would be the only candidate and it should not have that much oil in it, just a surface coating.

well heres the thing that i found wierd. that overflow tank was filled with that oil mixture....but it was nowhere to be found anywhere else. the ast, the clear line i have running from the ast to the radiator...... none of those areas had a brown liquid in them. its like it alllllllll collected in the overflow.

does anyone else think it could be the turbo? or is that a stretch?

I'm with everyone on the turbo...

I'd drain the oil pan and the coolant system into seperate containers, send both samples off to Blackstone Labs for analysis (not expensive). I'd also run some clean oil through the motor and a clean run of glycol and a coolant system treatmen/cleaner a couple times to flush the passages and radiator out. Then fill back up with new oil and glycol/water mix... atleast until you find the problem. Evans is not only expensive but it also completely looses its ability to function as designed with ANY contamination what-so-ever.

_Kris

A blown coolant seal can let coolant into the combustion chamber, or combustion pressure into the coolant system. Oil cannot pass by a coolant seal. CAN NOT.

The only way for coolant and oil to mix in a rotary are if

1) a freeze plug under the front cover leaks, letting them both mix...since the coolant in the passages is under pressure (pressure from gravity if not running) the coolant will spill into the oil, not vice versa, since the oil is not under any pressure sitting in the pan.

2) an iron housing cracks on the facing, which is VERY rare and is ONLY the result of being left outside without antifreeze in the winter (I have seen this a few times before). I once took apart a 2nd gen core with a 2" square chunk of iron face GONE. This let all the coolant that was normally held behind the face, mix with all the oil that flows through the rotor.

3) the turbo is somehow allowing them to mix. I have never seen this, but it is theoretically possible.

Those are the only way I can think of for oil to get in the coolant or vice versa.

thank you very much for posting this, and reinforcing what i had thought. for that much oil to get into the COOLANT and not vice versa, dumbfounds me.

VERY good idea, i'm going to do this. will they be able to tell me if its amsoil or not? maybe by some crazy chance, someone put oil into my overflow tank? trying to cover every possible angle on this one lol

So uh, have you looked to see if you are missing any oil?

i just checked the dipstick for contamination, it wasn't "low" so i didn't really think much of it......but i'll get an exact reading on it to see just how much lower it really is. cause it was full just 2 weeks ago when i changed the oil

any contaminant liquid immiscible and less dense than the coolant will be expelled to the barf can

well thats good, atleast it was thrown to a central location instead of floating around everywhere inside my motor

I should have said "most of it" :)

follow kento's advice, but diagnose the problem before you spend any money on new fluids

That looks very bad.
That AND flushing coolant maybe?

or if the iron is cracked at the dowel pin--where they usually crack from pre-ignition.

as far as the substance being in the can and not anywhere else, it makes sense. if it's oil, it's less dense than evans, and it will float. i wouldn't worry about having it float around in there. once you flush the system (assuming you fix the cause) there shouldn't be any damage to anything.

pour some evans in a cup and add some oil--see what the mix looks like
do the same for gas, then pre-mix

since those are the only fluids in there, those are your only possibilities. see if there's a difference between how the premix oil and the engine oil look. that might help you figure out which one it is.

look for any leaks around your oil feed line on your front iron. i've seen a few housings crack there--especially on higher hp/boost/rpm engines.

Is this car a stick? A failed oil cooler (in the radiator) on an automatic car can cause this kind of mess.

Adicted, if you have the tools, I'd remove the front cover and try to varify Kevin's theory on the leaky freeze plug. The front freeze plug would be the only one to allow oil in. However, judging by the amount, you are either seriously low on oil in the pan now, or someone else added that to the AST.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ale/front1.jpg

I stll think it is the turbo or possibly 3rd party interaction (adding oil to coolant), did you anger anyone recently, or does your car use hoodpins instead of the factory latch?

_Kris

na, that would let the coolant into the oil. the oil isn't pressurised in the front cover--it just splashes around. he would have filled up the oil pan with coolant and overheated promptly.

i would feel somthing like pre-ignition, right? the car has been pulling very smooth through boost i haven't been having any breakup. fwiw the car made 424whp @15psi on pump gas, my a/fs are in the low to mid 11's and i never go above 7500 rpms


yea car is a 5 speed

i do have hoodpins, but i have the factory latch as well. the last i had driven the car was tuesday nite, its been in my garage ever since. i do leave the doors unlocked when it is at my house tho, so i guess its not entirely unpossible if someone left the garage unlocked. i can't really think of a reason why anyone would do that to me tho?????????

looks like i'll be checking the oil level today to see if i can rule that out or not

Since im a believer in everything being the simplest problem: Are you sure no one has messed with you/your car and dumped some oil in the overflow?

It may sound stupid but i figure its better to think about it before you rip the engine apart looking for the problem

Edit: ooops someone already beat me to it

You're right that the front and rear irons can crack in these spots, and oil flows through these areas so you'd have an external oil leak. Please explain how coolant would interact with said oil leaks, though? :scratch:

Have you changed your oil since you noticed the funky coolant?

-s-

the leak doesn't have to be solely external. it can split farther down and compramise the outer coolant seal area.

that much oil in that short of time tho? i drive the car MAYBE twice a week, and 2 weeks ago that overflow tank was just half full of coolant, no oil in sight

in any event tho i am checking the level on the dipstick tonite when i get back from work, i'll post back and let you guys know what i find

i was thinking an internal crack on an iron from the oil passages as well, they don't have to be restricted to being external.

to me it sounds like this motor is going to need to be torn apart to find the problem though, oil PSI is higher than coolant PSI especially since evans is no pressure so oil is much easier forced into the cooling system not vice versa.

also, engine oil is VERY bad for the cooling system hoses, you should consider replacing them after this is all sorted out otherwise they may eventually burst because the hoses will tend to soak up the oil like a sponge and become soft.

110psi will push a lot of oil out real fast.

this is true.... good point

ok, so say WORST case, if something internally was cracked, would my car be running as smooth as it is right now? wouldn't i be noticing it in performance/ hard starting/ smoke out the exhaust?

That blows Jay. I personally do not see how the turbo could be causing this. From my limited knowledge of rotary engines the freeze caps seems the most likely to me. What does the barf mixture smell like?

an engine with a cracked iron will still drive perfectly normal, it will just force oil either into the cooling system or out onto the ground.

Im having the same problem oil in the coolant not as much as this. I am having tons of smoke coming out the exhaust it used to just normally do a little till the car warmed up. Also there is a ticking coming from my turbo side of the engine, could be exhaust leak or could it be related to all of the above? Im about to tear apart the engine anyways and have an attempt at rebuilding it myself in a few weeks with the 3mm apex seals.

k, then i guess thats not far-fetched either, i really hope its not that tho obviously.....

ok lil update for those following this:

i went to the garage today to try to find some more stuff out. here are my findings.

1. the oil level is COMPLETELY full on the dipstick at operating temperature. ie: i'm missing no oil from the motor

2. i drained the overflow tank and saved it to be sent out for analysis. its got a redish tint to it in the bottle, and there is some sludge on the bottom of my overflow tank

3. i let the car warm up with the cap off of the filler neck, to watch things as the car warmed up. there was no sign of the discolored coolant, everything was the color evans is supposed to be (mostly clear), verified this when some spilled over

4. the car wasn't smoking at all, wasn't idling wierd, wasn't missing when i rev'd it with the throttle cable

so basically everything seems to be in working order as it should. once the car warmed up it sat at its normal 85 degrees, with the fans kicking on at 87. no wierd fluctuations or anything like that. i had someone sitting in the car watching the temps for me the whole time.

I still suspect the turbo is the culprit