How bad is this milky oil?

[ryanb]

Tonight I pulled off the valve cover to find this milky mess. I immediately thought cracked/warped head or bad head gasket, so I checked the coolant and it looked OK to me. I did a search and found that others experienced this and found that it was condensation. Is this too milky to be condensation? (the mark on that cam lobe was a little worrisome also)

Picture of coolant:

[peteinjp]

Could just be going into the block without oil seeping into the coolant.

[ryanb]

I'm not sure if it's loosing coolant. I've never driven the car, it was a project that I took over from someone else. I didn't think of it only going one way...

[Guest Anonymous]

Stop driving the car now. You've got "milkshake" and it will destroy the engine in short order.

You most likely have a blown head gasket and coolant is mixing with the oil.

Sorry,

Max

[Mike Self]

1. Do a compression test. If you have low or no compression on adjacent cylinders, you probably have a blown head gasket. Take Max's advice and don't drive it until you fix that. If compression is even on all four cylinders, try this...

2. drain old oil--let it drain for several hours--you might even pour some kerosene into the valve chamber--or spray it down with WD40 or the like to try and flush the water/oil mixture down into the sump before draining. You want to get as much "milkshake" out as possible. Then refill with fresh oil 9and a new filter), start it up and run it for awhile. Look for bubbles coming up in the radiator--that's usually a sign of fluid interchange between oil and water. Then shut engine down and check for milkshake condition in the valve chest again. If it's there, you have a cracked head or block, or a blown head gasket that isn't manifesting itself with a compression test.

It's just possible that before you got the car, the PO didn't use it very much and would start and run it for a few minutes, then shutting down before the engine had a chance to warm up. Thus condensation.

Hope it's the latter case...let us know what you find.

mike

[Durango_Dave]

I'd add that the coolant doesn't look very good either, maybe that's some oil floating around in it?

[Marty]

Yeah that cam is toast, I think that is to much milk shake for condensation but your going to have to pull the head to change the cam sooner rather than later, IMHO anyway.

[JK]

Stop driving the car now. You've got "milkshake" and it will destroy the engine in short order.

You most likely have a blown head gasket and coolant is mixing with the oil.

Sorry,

Max

Absolutely! Additionaly, don't just let it sit like that, everything will rust up like the project car I bought with a blown head gasket. I had to use a 3lb. sledge and a quart of WD-40 to get one piston out! Drain the oil, squirt everything with WD-40 to keep rust from forming, turn it over a few times with a breaker bar on the crank pulley....then you can let it sit until you want to do something with it.

[ryanb]

Thanks for all the replies and tips! I'll do a compression test and then promptly remove the sludge and WD-40 the engine.

[ryanb]

Compression test results:

125 - #1 cylinder

120 - #2 cylinder

120 - #3 cylinder

95 - #4 cylinder