Fishhawk

Here's my probelm. Saturday I dumped the antifreeze in my 85 GT, 5-spd and refilled it with water. My local drag strip requires no antifreeze to test and tune. Sunday I make 6 passes and call it a day. I get home I drain the water and refill the radiator with the antifreeze that I previously had drained. (The pan was cleaned before the antifreeze was drained into it). The motor was cold when I refilled the radiator. I start the motor to warm it up so the thermostat will open. When the motor warmed up I noticed what seemed like oil floating in the antifreeze. Could this be anything other then a blown head gasket? Could this be anything other then oil? Does oil float on top of antifreeze or does it foam? The car runs fine. Oil preassure is 55 psi.,(normal) and the water temp is steady at 185 degrees (also normal). Any opinions are welcome.

cammedlx

sounds to me like a bad head gasket or maybe cracked head that is the only thing i can think for the syptom that you described but who knows

roundman

oil is lighter than water and will float on the surface, so it could be oil. I wouldn't panic just yet. pull the dipstick and see if there are signs of condensation on it. It will be a milky off white color if there is excess moisture in the oil. also look for bubbles rising up in the coolant with the engine hot. if neither of these are present, you might still want to do a compression test to truly check for a blown head gasket, but if the car is not overheating or you have no signs of water in the oil, I don't think you have blown a gasket. It could be there were traces of some oil in the container or funnel you used to pour the coolant back into the radiator.

Fishhawk

I'm sure the container was clean. Scrubbed it out with acitone. Drove it hard last night for about 20 minutes. Couldn't get the temp to go beyond 195. The oil preasure stayed at 55 psi. and no smoke/steam from the exhaust. When I drained the oil it was dirty (2000 miles) but no signs of antifreeze. I think that if I had a blown gasket I would be more inclined to see antifreeze in oil then the other way around. I'm starting to think my running it at the track with just water in the radiator losened up some deposits/rust and now its floating around and just looks like oil. At least I hope.