coolant in oil, water passages clean

[jmg8550]

I have a 2000 ranger 4.0L with 170,000 miles and my coolant is flowing into the oil to the point where the air cleaner housing is full of the milky stuff. Anyone ever have this problem? What could it be? Maybe intake gaskets, or a cracked head? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

 

[Nipplechops]

Could be an intake gasket, cracked head or a blown head gasket. I would start by pulling the intake and go from there. If the intake gasket looked good, well, you would have had to pull it to check the head gasket anyways. If the head gaskets are good, well, you would have had to pull the heads to have them checked.

My best guess would be a blown head gasket.

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

and i would stop driving the truck until the issue is fixed. coolant will wipe out the bearings in your reciprocating assembly in no time...then your in for a long and expensive repair (instead of a relitively simple head gasket).

 

[jmg8550]

the truck is at the shop i work at. it is not driveable anyway. I pulled the intake plenum off and the passenger side valve cover. gonna start from there monday.

 

[jmg8550]

do heads crack on these engines very often? they look pretty robust cast iron.

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

not any more than usual...but they do crack. especially if the engine got hot.

 

[jmg8550]

the engine never got hot. it started to but i shut her down when the guage read 3/4 hot. and when i did shut down is when the coolant came pouring out of my air cleaner housing.

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

if the gauge got higher than where it normally runs then the engine got "hot"

im not surew how you got antifreeze out of the air cleaner housing though...there should be no way for coolant to get into there.

 

[jmg8550]

there is a hose coming off of the oil filler tube going to the air cleaner inlet tube after the maf sensor. i think the oil over filled from the coolant and got into the air cleaner housing from there. i did have a timing cover gasket leaking externally, and i sealed it with BG coolant system sealer. it stopped the leak externally but maybe it it blew the gasket and let coolant flow into the engine from there. does anyone know if i can replace the timing cover gasket without removing the oil pan? if not i'm just gonna remove the engine and replace all gaskets. start fresh.

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

the hose you speak of is just a breather for the crank case. if you are getting oil and/or water out of that, then you have some serious issues (drain back blockage, blow by, or at the very least, a PCV system malfunction).

FYI, NEVER use any kind of "stop leak" in your cooling system, engine, transmission, power steering......anywhere really. they only cause more problems down the road when the inevitable gasket or seal fails and you have to attempt to replace it with that goey stop leak in the way. cooling system sealers in particular have a tendancy to plug cooling passages and cause hot spots which can lead to cracked heads and the like.

you can replace the front cover seal with the oil pan in place. you just need to remove the front couple bolts.

when you check the dipstick, is the oil level higher than it should be? is there any milky whit stuff on the dipstick?

 

[jmg8550]

well, tore the cylinder heads off today and found both heads cracked. 2 chamers on one head and 1 on the other. right between the valves. and yes my oil was way overfull. drained about 16 quarts of oil/coolant mix.

 

[dorman68]

Could be an intake gasket, cracked head or a blown head gasket. I would start by pulling the intake and go from there. If the intake gasket looked good, well, you would have had to pull it to check the head gasket anyways. If the head gaskets are good, well, you would have had to pull the heads to have them checked.

My best guess would be a blown head gasket.

I agree

 

[Wicked_Sludge]

I agree

uhh, did you not read the post right above yours? he already pulled the heads and discovered they were both cracked, mystery solved.

 

[jmg8550]

Decided to rebuild the whole motor. It had 170,000 miles on it and I don't want to have anymore problems. All the bearings looked really good. The front main bearings were showing a little bit of wear but nothing major. All in all everything looked good except the heads. My local machine shop is getting new bare castings for $150 each. One question though, 4 of the exhaust valves were starting to go into the valve seats pretty far. What causes that?