Was: Oh crud - coolant in the oil, now Blown Head Gasket
Hi guys - hope everyone is doing well.
Apparently the TR Gods are not pleased I sold all the Triumphs as my "keeper" TR4a is apparently quite unwell.
Here is what happened - while she has always run a but warm we determined that was most likely the gauge. Put around 200 miles on her from a new rebuild without issue. Yesterday I noticed the temp was higher than usual and she was barfing coolant into over overflow tank. Odd, but she was running OK so I topped off the coolant and parked her. Today I wanted to make sure that I didn't have some sort of air pocket in the cooling system so I drove her around the neighborhood for about 5 minutes to get the thermostat open and she started barfing fluid again. Carefully removed the radiator cap and confirmed the water pump was moving water, confirmed the top and bottom hoses had flow. That all checked out, but I was low on coolant again. Oh no - I better check the oil and yep, coolant in the oil. Apparently quite a bit. I need to drain it all tonight once I have proper containers for it but, to put it mildly, ugh.
She didn't run like that long, but obviously not helpful for the lubrication system.
Assuming head gasket has gone? I never got to 500 miles to re-torque the head so I wasn't worried about it. Any words of comfort to pass along? Feel free to get make stuff up as I am pretty gutted right now...
Hi guys - hope everyone is doing well.
Apparently the TR Gods are not pleased I sold all the Triumphs as my "keeper" TR4a is apparently quite unwell.
Here is what happened - while she has always run a but warm we determined that was most likely the gauge. Put around 200 miles on her from a new rebuild without issue. Yesterday I noticed the temp was higher than usual and she was barfing coolant into over overflow tank. Odd, but she was running OK so I topped off the coolant and parked her. Today I wanted to make sure that I didn't have some sort of air pocket in the cooling system so I drove her around the neighborhood for about 5 minutes to get the thermostat open and she started barfing fluid again. Carefully removed the radiator cap and confirmed the water pump was moving water, confirmed the top and bottom hoses had flow. That all checked out, but I was low on coolant again. Oh no - I better check the oil and yep, coolant in the oil. Apparently quite a bit. I need to drain it all tonight once I have proper containers for it but, to put it mildly, ugh.
She didn't run like that long, but obviously not helpful for the lubrication system.
Assuming head gasket has gone? I never got to 500 miles to re-torque the head so I wasn't worried about it. Any words of comfort to pass along? Feel free to get make stuff up as I am pretty gutted right now...
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