Coolant in oil problem

zeke491

New Member
Nov 26, 2002
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Last summer my car started smoking out of the exhaust and I figured it was the head gasket. I finally started tearing her down and found oil on my upper intake spacer and gaskets....is this normal???

also found some residue on the center port on my upper intake. Do you know what this center part is for? Here's a pic:
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Yeah, that center port is connected to the exhaust ports to recirculate exhaust back up to the EGR on 93' and older Mustangs. 94-95 Mustangs collect the exhaust back up through passenger side exhaust primary. Ford didn't change the heads in 94'+ cars, they just capped that port with the intake manifold. I would guess there is a good chance one of your intake gaskets down low is leaking, and it's sucking up oil from the valley into those ports.

Kurt
 
Yeah, there is a coolant port in the intake gasket that goes from the heads into the intake. The intake runners create a vacuum that can suck up oil, and water. The water might be leaking from that water port into the intake runner, causing it to smoke, and into the engine valley causing water to get into the oil. Usually when the head gasket blows, it's combustion gas that gets into the water causing the cooling water to bubble and boil, because the combustion gas is at a much higher pressure than the water pressure. It has to be a pretty serious head gasket blow to go the other way. Before you take the engine apart any farther, I would run a compression test. That can be a little inconclusive, because many time if you have a head gasket blown, it can be so small, it won't show up on a compression test. If you still have the cooling water in the engine, you can run a test on the cooling water to determine if there is any combustion gas in there. That test is pretty conclusive. I see that you have swapped to a Trick Flow intake. Now, I'm not going to make judgement on whoever did the work, but there is a possibility the intake gasket was not installed very well causing it to leak quickly. I make mistakes installing intake gaskets too. I've had them leak before, so don't think I'm insulting your work. It just happens. From what you are telling me, I'm leaning more towards an intake gasket leak over a head gasket leak. Which if I'm correct, it's a lot less work to just change an intake gasket, then to change head gaskets.

Kurt