Well I live in Wisconsin and when I parked my car for the winter (in my driveway, covered) I made sure it had plenty of antifreeze. I started it up a few times over the winter just to make sure everything was OK. It always ran fine, no white smoke or anything, and the last time I checked the oil with the dipstick it looked fine (that was probably in January).

Today I started it, started fine, ran good, good oil pressure. Was going to take it to the gas station to fill up. I'm having transmissions problems which ended up stranding me in the driveway, lol. I decided to double check fluids at that point. Checked oil... the level was good but it was chocolate milk. I jacked it up and drained the oil, all chocolate milk. I popped the rad cap, couldn't see any coolant in there. Pulled the reservoir dipstick, could see it was wet but didn't seem "chocolaty".

I can't think of what could have happened besides maybe there wasn't actually enough antifreeze over the winter and it froze and cracked the block letting coolant into oil, or if it blew a headgasket somehow (that doesn't seem likely to me since the engine was rebuilt last summer and was perfect up to the last day I drove it in November).

Anyone have any thoughts or input (even if just confirming my ideas)? There was NO white smoke either when it was running this morning, except for the usual faint exhaust wisps you see when it's cold outside. Is there anyway I can find out more without pulling the heads/whole motor out?

 

could be a bad case of condensation, change oil and try again

 

That's water vapor, not smoke.

 

lol I know, that's what I was saying. It wasn't smoking, just the normal water vapor.

 

A couple things you could do. Change it all, maybe use some sealing tabs, and see if it happens again, bleed the system then see if your coolant goes down or if your oil goes up and gets contaminated again. Get a sample of your antifreeze out of there and test it for how much protection you have in freezing weather. If it's a real low protection level, then maybe it froze and cracked, but I would think your radiator would have split before the engine block if that was the case. Take it somewhere to have the coolant system pressure tested and see if there is a problem that way. If none of that helps, then look at the plugs and see if any look different then maybe you would have to pull that head off and see what's going on.

If you made a lot of short trips in the car where it didnt warm up and the pcv system wasnt working, it could pollute the oil, but wouldnt affect the antifreeze level - you would have noticed that before probably.

 

Thanks for the ideas.

I drained some of the coolant from the radiator and it looked completely clean. I topped it off and change the oil/filter. I started it for a bit and the oil/coolant looks clean still and the levels stayed steady. Oil pressure is great and the motor is nice and quiet.

Tomorrow I'll drain the oil and change it again, and see how the oil looks. I guess it could have been just a lot of condensation collected from the several times I started and ran it over the winter?

 

Maybe for some reason it wasn't sealing up too well in cold weather.