What could still be dripping??

Hendu3270

Hendu3270

Member
Recent repairs........ Valve cover gaskets, oil pan gasket (riser), intake manifold gasket and all injectors cleaned and new O-rings replaced while it was apart. Broke an oil pan bolt and was planning to just keep rolling after I completed everything else unless it leaked. It leaked. Extracted bolt but when I drain the fresh oil (after only 5 miles driving) It had a "brownish" film on top of the oil. 4 days later that same oil in the drain pan is jet black with zero film or brown. It's now been 6 days since the oil pan has been off (working on it this weekend) and it still soaks a new 1' x 2 ' piece of cardboard each day. What would still be leaking and slowly dripping in this case? I placed a jar under it to catch on of the drips this afternoon and will check it when off work.
 
Wouldn't sweat either of your concerns. The oil will pick up enough of the used stuff left throughout the block to turn it a color pretty quick. As for the continued drippings, there a ton of nooks inside an engine block - it'll take a long time for all of the small amount that's still clinging to the passage walls to completely find it's way out.
 
Fully agree with Jerry. You would be amazed how long drips will occur and how much even a few drips will soak and make a mess of things.
 
Thanks for the responses guys. I think I'll bolt the oil pan back up, pour in fresh oil and just check how the oil looks each day. This is a pic of the oil the day I drained it (5 miles on it) just to see what I was seeing.
 

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Hendu3270 said:
Thanks for the responses guys. I think I'll bolt the oil pan back up, pour in fresh oil and just check how the oil looks each day. This is a pic of the oil the day I drained it (5 miles on it) just to see what I was seeing.
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That looks like coolant or water mixing with the oil. Is it possible there was some kind of water residue in that yellow catch pan when you drained the oil? If you're not seeing that anymore, that's a good sign.
 
WJCO said:
That looks like coolant or water mixing with the oil. Is it possible there was some kind of water residue in that yellow catch pan when you drained the oil? If you're not seeing that anymore, that's a good sign.
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The drain pan had nothing in it when we started. The oil drained out of the oil pan that color. Engine ran really good when we took it for a quick test drive after doing the misc work stated above. Then it sat for one week before we got back under it and dealt with the broken pan bolt. I can't see it having a blown head gasket which would cause coolant to leak into the oil since it ran so good and the oil that came out of it before we started all of the work was just fine. Seemed like it would have HAD to be associated with what we did. The two things that have continued to make me wonder is could one of those injectors be leaking now and letting fuel sit on a piston and slowly be leaking down or if the intake gasket didn't seal up right and be letting coolant somehow find its way in the crankcase. And yeah, after that yellow drain pan sat in the garage four 4 days, whatever was discoloring it is now gone. Coolant would have evaporated that fast I don't think (which I think points me back to possible fuel. It doesn't take too much effort to get down to the fuel rail and pop it back off so I may just make sure they aren't leaking before I call it good.
 
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Hendu3270 said:
The drain pan had nothing in it when we started. The oil drained out of the oil pan that color. Engine ran really good when we took it for a quick test drive after doing the misc work stated above. Then it sat for one week before we got back under it and dealt with the broken pan bolt. I can see it having a blown head gasket which would cause coolant to leak into the oil since it ran so good and the oil that came out of it before we started all of the work was just fine. Seemed like it would have HAD to be associated with what we did. The two things that have continued to make me wonder is could one of those injectors be leaking now and letting fuel sit on a piston and slowly be leaking down or if the intake gasket didn't seal up right and be letting coolant somehow find its way in the crankcase. And yeah, after that yellow drain pan sat in the garage four 4 days, whatever was discoloring it is now gone. Coolant would have evaporated that fast I don't think (which I think points me back to possible fuel. It doesn't take too much effort to get down to the fuel rail and pop it back off so I may just make sure they aren't leaking before I call it good.
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Did you drain the coolant enough prior to pulling the intake manifold or is it possible some of the coolant could have gotten into the engine during the repairs you did?
 
Hendu3270 said:
The drain pan had nothing in it when we started. The oil drained out of the oil pan that color. Engine ran really good when we took it for a quick test drive after doing the misc work stated above. Then it sat for one week before we got back under it and dealt with the broken pan bolt. I can see it having a blown head gasket which would cause coolant to leak into the oil since it ran so good and the oil that came out of it before we started all of the work was just fine. Seemed like it would have HAD to be associated with what we did. The two things that have continued to make me wonder is could one of those injectors be leaking now and letting fuel sit on a piston and slowly be leaking down or if the intake gasket didn't seal up right and be letting coolant somehow find its way in the crankcase. And yeah, after that yellow drain pan sat in the garage four 4 days, whatever was discoloring it is now gone. Coolant would have evaporated that fast I don't think (which I think points me back to possible fuel. It doesn't take too much effort to get down to the fuel rail and pop it back off so I may just make sure they aren't leaking before I call it good.
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Have you stirred the pan to see if it settled out?
 
WJCO said:
Did you drain the coolant enough prior to pulling the intake manifold or is it possible some of the coolant could have gotten into the engine during the repairs you did?
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I didn't actually drain any coolant, no. We disconnected the radiator hose from the thermostat housing and there wasn't much in the hose at the time and I didn't think about if there may have been coolant in any of the passages in intake manifold. At any given time, is the water passages in the intake 100% full of water? If there was then it would have drained straight into the intake ports as soon as we broke it loose. I don't recall seeing any coolant when we pulled it off but if it ran down I'm not sure if I would have noticed. Then maybe over the course of that next week while we worked on things, that water ran down into the oil. I'll bet that's what happened.
 
Weebz said:
Agreed. But curious if whatever fluid or contamination settled
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One thing I did do is, on that day we drained the brownish oil, I took a jar and scooped up some of that brown oil and set the jar on my work bench with a tupperware container on top of it to see if it would settle out so I could see if a layer of coolant formed on top (or possibly fuel). When I smell it smells of fuel (although I don't have the best smeller). One curious thing is the oil in the jar, with the cover on it, is still brown.
 
Little digging around and coolant will settle out to the bottom. I’d agree that it looks to me like you have antifreeze in your oil
 
Is it possible that you have a ruptured oil cooler? I replaced mine last year and did my best to isolate the fluids while replacing but I still found a little oil in my coolant reservoir.
 
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