Complete Rebuild- now coolant in oil

[94shodriver]

I just finished a complete rebuild and 3.0 to 3.2 swap. Everything is new, save for the rings and valve guides, I used the 3.2 heads with the 3.0 intake cams. After installing the engine, filling it with fluids, and test starting it, it quickly began to idle worse and worse until it would not run any more (maybe 3 minutes total). My helper said he put 4 gallons of coolant in the radiator before start up. Now the crankcase is full of coolant and oil. The radiator is low, too low to see if there is any oil in it. There are no external leaks. The only places that I can think of for a leak are the head gaskets and the oil cooler. I was very careful to clean the block (hot tanked) and the heads, in addition to cleaning out the head bolt threads and head bolt holes in the block. I double checked the torque on the bolts for each torque value. I checked on-line to make sure that I ordered 3.2 head gaskets, and I did not notice any discrepancies during installation.

Unless anyone knows of any other areas to troubleshoot, my course of action is to drain the fluids, remove the oil cooler and check for an internal coolant leak, then to do a compression test on the cylinders.

Has anyone ever had a similar experience? Advice?

Thanks,

Ian

 

[SHOtimer]

The only way for the oil cooler to fail is to have a massive internal leak, which would pour coolant into the oil passages.

The only other possibility would be a cracked block/head or a head gasket failure.

It would obviously be a pretty substanial faliure to dump that much coolant into the crankcase that quickly.

You know what, I just thought of....there are a couple of freeze plugs IIRC that vent into the crank case. I think their is one right underneath were the PCV vents out of the crankcase.

It is possible one of those wasn't installed correctly and has produced a massive leak.

...sorry to hear about the problem. I rebuilt my 3.2, I was extremely nervous when i started it up for the first time....

Doug

 

[sperold]

Buy a radiator pressure tester and pump up the pressure in your cooling system and see how long it holds. Post this experiment as soon as you have it.
I rebuilt an older FE Ford engine and it had coated head gaskets (steel shim type) for ultra high compression. On that motor, you had to run it dry for a few minutes before you added coolant, to get the gasket to seal. In that case, the water / antifreeze would run out on the ground as fast as you poured it into the rad.
This may not be your case, but it shows you the unusual things you can encounter.

 

[Eric VerValin]

What about the freeze plug behind / above the rear main seal.