Oil in coolant???

[ThatDieselGuy]

So I popped the hood on my wife's sonic today to do a check up and when I looked at the coolant it had what appeared to be oil in it. It almost looked like some one had made a brown milkshake in the degas bottle. I will upload pictures tomorrow of what it looks like to better assist yall in helping to figure out what it could be.

Do these cars have oil coolers that could rupture and mix coolant and oil or am I looking at a blown head gasket allowing the same mixture

Thanks for any input!

 

[mitdr774]

Mine did the same. I had it flushed and it hasnt come back since. It almost looks like Dex-cool that has started to crystalize (sp) due to excess heat. Interestingly enough from back in my dealers days I recall being told by an engineer that Dex-cool starts to do that around 225-230*F. Seeing as how the 1.8 (well at least mine anyways) runs in the 217-224 range I wouldnt be shocked if that was what was happening.

 

[JBScat]

I was going to say, maybe the Dex cool going bad.

 

[rojoes]

Time to flush and refill with new Dex-cool

 

[Natesriv]

Coolant reservoir smell like gas ?

 

[ThatDieselGuy]

Thanks everyone for the help! Y'all were right on the money, old coolant had deteriorated. Just flushed it all out, cleaned out the degas bottle and filled it back up. Hopefully by the time it needs to be done again we will have a new car lol

 

[mja]

Curious how many miles were on your car when it did this?

 

[mitdr774]

My factory fill was junk by 70k miles. Had to have it flushed due to the coloring and clumping. I have only ever seen that happen in the past in vehicles that ran hot. This was in the days of 195* thermostats though.

 

[mja]

Good to know, sounds like I'll be flushing mine soon.

 

[ThatDieselGuy]

Good to know, sounds like I'll be flushing mine soon.

Car had around 145,xxx on it at the time. We had taken it to a local mechanic to replace the water pump and he filled it with some generic bs coolant, which probably lead to the breakdown of the coolant that was left over from his water pump job.

The flush is super easy and just a tad bit time consuming. I had to flush it about 4 times to get all the clumps out of the system but if your coolant is still good it should only take 1 or 2.

 

[Mad*Max]

Thanks everyone for the help! Y'all were right on the money, old coolant had deteriorated. Just flushed it all out, cleaned out the degas bottle and filled it back up. Hopefully by the time it needs to be done again we will have a new car lol

How do you know it was just the coolant deteriorating? My car has the same but it only has 24000 miles and I have never seen DexCool deteriorate on my other cars. I have a residue on the walls of the tank which come off with my finger. Thanks!

 

[ThatDieselGuy]

How do you know it was just the coolant deteriorating? My car has the same but it only has 24000 miles and I have never seen DexCool deteriorate on my other cars. I have a residue on the walls of the tank which come off with my finger. Thanks!

So I wasn't 100% sure but I went off of an educated guess and everyone's input on here lol I also have never heard of DexCool deteriorating that quickly. There was another thread on here about someone's oil cooler leaking into their coolant even when there car had pretty low mileage. Here is the link

http://www.sonicownersforum.com/for...ontamination-coolant-reservoir-cause-fix.html

 

[Mad*Max]

That guy actually had oil in his coolant from the leak.

You did your flush back in December, has the coolant been okay thus far? I did mine a week ago and so far it looks normal.

So I wasn't 100% sure but I went off of an educated guess and everyone's input on here lol I also have never heard of DexCool deteriorating that quickly. There was another thread on here about someone's oil cooler leaking into their coolant even when there car had pretty low mileage. Here is the link

http://www.sonicownersforum.com/for...ontamination-coolant-reservoir-cause-fix.html

 

[ThatDieselGuy]

That guy actually had oil in his coolant from the leak.

You did your flush back in December, has the coolant been okay thus far? I did mine a week ago and so far it looks normal.

Oh I gotcha, its just when DexCool goes bad it looks very similar to an oil/coolant mix (just from my experience with blown oil coolers in powerstrokes lol)

So it is looking better but it looks as if some of the left over sludge managed to make its way to the degas bottle So I plan on flushing it again and finding a cleaning solution to flush it with.

However I have also almost put 9,000 miles on it, so it may just be time for a flush again lol

 

[Mad*Max]

So what I am understanding is that you are only seeing residual deposits where were probably from before - it looks nothing like it did before you did the coolant flush?

Oh I gotcha, its just when DexCool goes bad it looks very similar to an oil/coolant mix (just from my experience with blown oil coolers in powerstrokes lol)

So it is looking better but it looks as if some of the left over sludge managed to make its way to the degas bottle So I plan on flushing it again and finding a cleaning solution to flush it with.

However I have also almost put 9,000 miles on it, so it may just be time for a flush again lol

 

[ThatDieselGuy]

So what I am understanding is that you are only seeing residual deposits where were probably from before - it looks nothing like it did before you did the coolant flush?

Yup, when I flushed it last time I just used distilled water and no cleaning solution. I have kept track of how much gunk is in the degas bottle and it hasn't collected anymore in about a week. So I am willing to bet it was just left over crap.

This time around I plan on using some type of cleaner. I will have to see if some VC9 is safe to use on the car like it is my truck lol.

 

[LorbeerTLC]

Color of Oil on Dipstick?

ThatDieselGuy: Just curious, how does your oil look on your dipstick (i.e.: color)? Hopefully, it's not milky and has lots of bubbles on the stick (and it's not over the 'full' mark).

 

[ThatDieselGuy]

ThatDieselGuy: Just curious, how does your oil look on your dipstick (i.e.: color)? Hopefully, it's not milky and has lots of bubbles on the stick (and it's not over the 'full' mark).

Yea luckily it has not made a milkshake lol The oil is its usual color, smell, and no bubbles. I am going to flush it again next weekend and it will probably get a good 4-5 flushes with VC9 as well. Hopefully that will clean it out nice and good.

 

[Smartdave]

I had the same issue. Changed the oil cooler and issue solved. I included the directions in the other thread


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

 

[Mad*Max]

I had the same issue. Changed the oil cooler and issue solved. I included the directions in the other thread


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

in my case the brown sludge has not come back after flushing the cooling system