GDJT Allroad^2

Where as KaMaKaZieP may not need new head gaskets, I'm thinking that I most likely do. I went to poke around under the hood and assess things to do the installation of the new rear cam seals. I saw that the anti-freeze was dirty, with oil mixed in, and there appears to be oil seeping out from either the valve covers or heads or both.

I have a lot of pictures to tell the story. They are huge, hi-res pictures that are scaled down via the img tag.

I don't have the garage to work on this, and pulling the heads on an overhead-cam engine is something I haven't done before.

<img height=""400 width="600" src=http://jonworld.com/images/Cars/oil/P5110003.JPG>

<img height=""400 width="600" src=http://jonworld.com/images/Cars/oil/DCP_2254.JPG>

Oh well. I don't know what to do next. I know what needs to be done, though.

KaMaKaZieP -ALUMIN8-

I dont think that a head gasket can leak oil up top like that. you might have a valve cover gasket leak.

As for the oil in the antifreeze, check one of 2 things.

1. Your oil cooler might be leaking oil inot the a/f
2. You might want to check your radiator. The tranny fluid could possibly leak into the antifreeze if the radiator is bad. This can harm the engine AND the tranny.

Best of luck to the both of us!

gamma500

From my experience, a head gasket leak has certain characteristics: the engine tends to run mildly to very poorly with a miss, power loss, or combination of Sx's; rarely does the gasket break/burn away from the cylinder bore so that an isolated oil channel/coolant channel can communicate without effecting a cylinder or 2 adjoining ones' performance. Because of this communication, one usually has a bit of coolant in the exhaust which will give a sweet smell even when there is no obvious white smoke/"steam". There are many ways to assess head gasket health that you can check, leak down/compression testing, simple plug check, et. al. which a good mechanic can do for you.

I would hope that the problem is related to the oil cooler which has a short plastic tube which carrys coolant, prone to deterioration, and O-rings which should seal the oil flow from intermingling with the coolant but grow tired, as "lister "Ka" states.

Unless you or the previous owner drove the car "hot" for lack of coolant/oil, it's rather difficult to have head gasket failure, assuming they are the originals and nobody improperly installed a subsequent set.

GDJT Allroad^2

All, thanks for the pointers.

gamma500

Unfortunately, the oil cooler location is damn near impossible to look at,except from the bottom, and the comingling of oil/coolant will be in it's innards, not necessarily showing up externally....

GDJT Allroad^2

Fairly invasive, but not too horrible. I was looking at where the seals and such line up and I couldn't follow where oil could leak into the antifreeze from the seals alone.

After taking it out I guess I'll have to examine it to see if there are cracks, etc.

GDJT Allroad^2

Where could the transmission fluid and radiator fluid mix?

KaMaKaZieP -ALUMIN8-

The transmission runs fluid through a separate chamber at the bottom of the radiator.. if that chamber weakens then the main chamber can leak into the tranny and vice versa

gdaniel

The transmission fluid cooler is at the bottom of the radiator. My 92 100CSQ leaked transmission fluid into the coolant. Fortunately it went that direction and not coolant into the transmission. Transmission fluid should be checked for this possibility also as the pressure is higher in the coolant system when you first shut the engine off. Fix requires a new radiator if this is the problem.