thunderstick

well, here i am almost completely done with my rebuild and other than a few issues, it seems to have turned out pretty well. however, one of those issues is that it seems like oil is getting in to the water. twice now. initially, there seemed to be no problems, cooling system was running clear with just straight water for leak checks. last week when i picked it up after having the exhaust put on, i checked the water before i left, and it was all brown and frothy. talked to a friend who said it was probably the cleaners used in the system and to flush it all out and reservice it. did that today, and after cooling down, checked the water level, and well, it was brown again. my cooling system had no problems prior to this rebuild, so the only thing i can think of causing this is the oil cooler itself... the oil, by the way, is fine. not making any chocolate in there. any other possible sources? help, please, need to get this rectified so i can press on and finish this *****' up...

KAM

camaroracer016

sounds like a head gasket to me

thunderstick

damn... considered that, though... hope not. i know anything is possible these days, but everything is new. heads and block were all machined and all, but who says it can't be???

KAM

camaroracer016

yea thats true... it could have been a defective head gasket, or maybe even you have a cracked block..

thunderstick

someone else i talked to suggested re-checking the torque on the heads, so that could be possible, too, i suppose, and am gonna give that a shot first.
just kind of frustrating when my car is at home in the garage and i can't work on it til the weekends when i'm at home...

KAM

camaroracer016

yea.. that sucks.. lemt me know what you come up with on the oil problem

thunderstick

will do... gonna check the torque, run it, then bypass the oil cooler and check it again before i go replacing the already new head gaskets. felpro's are supposedly pretty good, so i'm hoping the oil cooler is the bad guy here...

KAM

BretD 88GTA

There's some debate about the Fel-Pro head gaskets. Some of the guys in my car club hate them with a passion. If you do search on the board, you will probably find some of their posts on the subject.

Look for comments by Dyno Don, madmax or james_85Z28.

Here's a sample from one of our discussions on the So. Cal board:
The full thread is here: https://www.thirdgen.org/techbb2/sho...ight=%2Bfelpro

mw66nova

iTrader: (13)

Corteco makes the absolute best gaskets on earth! we run them in both of out motors and couldn't be happier. couldn't tell you where to get them right now, or how much they are as we got ours straight from Corteco, but they are getting bigger and are starting to get into more mainstream market. i'll search around and find out where you can get them.

do you have milkshake oil? if not, i wouldn't think your gaskets were the culprit, cause it works both ways, if you have oil in your coolant, you should have coolant in your oil. check your oil cooler first.

thunderstick

back to the boards, finally... i agree with the water in oil and oil in water concept. should be the same in both... as luck would have it, apparently what needed done was a good flushing. did that a few days ago, ran the engine for a while and just had a tiny bit of crap in there. took it for about a 15 mile drive and let it cool down, and all appears to be well. coolant is normal, oil is normal, and both levels are steady. so, my analysis of it is that between the chems used on the block and cooling system, they just interacted with each other and made a nasty mess. but, just for confidence, i will be monitoring it...

KAM

camaroracer016

thats goof to hear!