I noticed on my OC3 that I have a copious amount of oil in my coolant. does anyone know of a common culprit for that? I have not had time but I plan to flush the coolant system with cascade dish soap change the coolant and see if it continues to make oil into it. it is possible the previous owner put contaminated coolant into it. we had a 3406 cat marine engine that was making oil into its coolant my company decided to replace the head as a tug boat cost 10-15 k a day and downtime was not optional for us to tear it down and see why. when we swapped the head we found a little ole O-ring was bad under the head.
I am new to these thermo syphon... do they make any pressure at all when running heavy?
No, the cooling system is at atmospheric, there is an overflow tube on the back of the radiator that just extends up into the top radiator tank that allows extra coolant to drain out. No valve or anything like that. The oil is under pressure & that would allow oil to be pushed into the coolant in the case of a cracked block. I hope someone just accidentally dumped some oil in by mistake.
Scott
yea that was my concern as well. I have a complete gasket kit for the engine when I get time I will tear it down and see if I can find any cracks or the like. seems like if it was a bad crack it would leak back into the oil as soon as there was no oil pressure to hold it at bay. maybe not that 3406 never leaked back but it was not a crack just an o-ring. the previous owner claims the engine was a fairly fresh rebuild and it does sound very good when it runs. I know you can crack a block with hydraulic pressure when torqueing bolts if you have oil in the bolt hole. a farmer down the road had that happen to his new block. Detroit drills a relief hole into the bolts.
Since it's a flat head engine, and there is no oil going through the head, you can rule out a head gasket or cracked head. Other than the timing gear housing at the front of the engine, I can't think of anywhere on the whole engine where there is oil under pressure on one side of iron and cooling water on the other side of that iron. Maybe around the back of the valve gallery?
If it were a OOC Hercules, there is the base of the oil filter that is the same casting as the lower radiator hose connection from the water pump, but I don't think there is anything like that on an IXB.
well my wife went to use it on our little farm and it started great like allways and idled great but she went to work it and it lost power and would barely move itself. I went out to look at it suspecting a fuel issue. I adjusted the 2 screws on the carberuator, the one with a T handle on the bottom and the one higher up on the throat of the carb. I don't have much experience with these carbs. it looks like an updraft. the adjustments made no difference unless I screwed them all the way in. I am going to put a compression tester on it as it seemed to turn over much easier than before. it has a water pump I looked at it and it does. I tried to identify the engine but the tag is missing completely. it is a flat head. I am about to take a long vacation from work and pending the compression test I may tear the engine down. when I ordered the gasket kit it was by chasis ser number.
I may have the info in my book but does anyone know the compression spec's off hand?
I will look into those possible ways you mentioned blake that the oil can get into the water.