Finding Water under Valvecovers, and on Dipstick
 

At first i thought it may be a blown head gasket but there is no evidence of white smoke, on startup or during running while warm or anything. i also dont get bubble in the radiator. car runs normal too...

but there is water appearing under my valve covers, its all stuck to the top of the cover and its very thick, not like normal "milk" that occurs.

I find some on the dipstick too, very little though. If i drain the oil to do an oil change however, there isnt a drop of water / milk to be seen, its all clean and pretty clear since the motor was just rebuilt.

What is it with you? You seem to have terrible luck!!

Maybe its just condensation in cold weather? If they are chrome (dipstick, VCs) then the chrome would attract it pretty quicky in cold weather.

My chrome stuff had a ton on it before I even got them bolted to the heads a few weeks ago in the cold weather.

Make sure your PCV valve, vent hoses, and supply hoses are clean and clear. If you allow your engine to warm up thoroughly and the PCV system is working, you should not get the emulsified oi/water mix. The oil has to reach beyond the boiling point of water to drive off the moisture once it is emulsified like that, which means you have to do more than just short trip driving all the time.

air intake manifold gasket could be leaking from water passage inbetween head and manifold?

I do have functional PCV but only on one side of the motor, but i get water on both sides.

Vader i know what you mean about oil temp removing water, i do alot of highway driving and usually after a long drive its all gone from under the valve covers.

I also have a valve cover leaking oil all over the place in the back of the motor, i keep taking it off and replacing the gasket and trying RTV but i cant get it to stop leaking. maybe the condensation is geting in through there alot? its on the non-pcv side.

I have a Fuel Filter hooked between the PCV valve and the Intake port, to catch oil because the PCV picks up lots of oil... i cant seem to get it baffled right. But i notice after a WOT pass there is alot of water/oil mix in the fuel filter. its caked all in there...

In a situation like this I wish I had a smoke machine. I noticed after my last intake swap (whoooo vett it has to be better, not) I have similiar problems with small amounts of water in the oil. I figured my system was taking moisture out of the air since its been cold with alot of snow and I only drive short distances. I've never had this problem before so it cant be moisture in the air. I bet your problem is the same as mine and it is the intake not sealing correctly.

As far as your valve cover problem some aftermarket valve covers not matter how much they cost tend to catch on the intake and not seal around the corners. I dont know what type you are using or if there factory but Ultra Grey silicone works best for sealing hot oil.

well SSC today i was looking under the hook and i saw to my dismay some oil / water mixture with BUBBLES comes out of it sitting right on the intake between the valve cover and intake on the back of the motor. the heads were shaved .010-.015 and it was enough to cause 2 of the intake bolts to NOT quite line up to their respective head holes... im wondering if this is the cause for the leaking? Pulling this LTR setup is a pain however, im not going to touch it till i get my HSR so i can just say goodnight to the LTR forever. Maybe i should get the HSR intake shaved .010 just to be safe?

As for the oil its not catching the intake i checked, its just leakin like crazy. i tried a rubber gasket, a cork gasket, silicone red plus the gasket, and even now one of their $40 "blue reuseable" gaskets... nothing has worked. im pretty sure its just the cheap chrome covers warped or bent.. been using the same ones for 3 motors now. im getting some cast ones asap...

*sigh O2 sensor died because oil was caked onto it so bad. now i have 10% extra fuel being added to all my main base map values. blah!

I'm in the same boat. Problem was the intake manifold gasket "sealed" with too little black RTV.

This weekend I'm finishing the RTV replacement with ultra grey RTV. I hope this will works good.

You needs check the coolant level too in order to knows the true problem. Do a search by "grey RTV" or "ultra grey" for more information about the infamous intake manifold coolant leak and its solution.

Denis V.

3 motors on the same aftermarket valve covers?

Have you tried straightening the mounting hole areas? They may have warped or "dented" after several swaps.

Make sure the mounting hole areas are flat and try it again. Just don't overtighten.

Well I'm guilty of the chrome valve cover reusing also. I just like mine because they say NEW GM GOODWRENCH 350. They do tend to leak a little bit more then I like but the things are off so often I can silicone them even though Ive done it to many others and it has solved the problem, no gasket just ultra grey.

This happened to me during my driveway head swap. I had about 30min to prep the headless engine for oncoming rain. I though it was pretty much sealed but a week or so later while installing new pushrods I found the thick substance you describe. I immediately changed the oil and found clean oil. Hasn't come back since so I haven't worried about it.

Yeah but the problem is Ive been finding water under them for months now, it wont go away, AND on top of that I have water missing from my radiator, every 150 miles or so I need to re-fill the radiator or it starts to overheat the engine, Im assuming the water is leaking somehow into my head/valve cover from somewhere under pressure. It never did this with an intake/carb on it, so im assuming its a fault / warp in the TPI intake.

finnaly figured it out. as i was installing the stealthram I noted the back 4 intake bolts bottomed out just before they torqued onto the manifold. I replaced the TPI real quick, and sure enough, it never got torqued down in the back. so

<b>air intake manifold gasket could be leaking from water passage inbetween head and manifold?
</b?

Sounds like that was the problem all along. stupid bolts! I put the stealthram on and used a washer under each bolt to torque it down. Ive put 200 miles on it so far, and not a drop is missing!

How would you describe the stuff you found? Like super thick vanilla malt stuff? My wife's car is doing the same thing, I took off the oil fill cap on the front valve cover and whaoo, I find tapioca-stuff on the bottom of the cap and clinging to the sides of the valve cover. Coolant goes bye-bye too. Oil looks slightly sludgy, but nothing like a milkshake. I'll have to take a picture of the valve cover sludge and post it.

Wow the search bar worked:)



It tends to look like snot at first or tapioca, I like to say it look like snot or my favorite "lung butter".

I noticed in your sig it says GP. Thats probably the car your noticing it in probably 3.1L. Your going to need to replace the intake gaskets, they tend to go around 90K or 5 years which ever come first. You caught it juist in time so dont let it go any further, it takes around 6 hours to do the job.

Yes,

It was the same for me (a bit of "butter" in the oil fill cap and valve covers).

No milkchocolade?: The leak is small. Stop the car for 1 day, take off the oil drain plug and put a bit of oil from the oil pan into a clear recipìent, then wait for other day and check the bottom of the recipient for coolant.

The solution was the grey RTV in the intake gasket (BOTH SIDES).


Denis V.

yeah those plastic gaskets on the 3.1's like to crack/break around the water ports.

Yes, it's only an SE, so it has the 3100. However, I dont' think I coudl deal with the 3.4 DOHC engine, despite it being a high-performance powerplant. C'mon, who really whats to change an alternator on those things?

Lung-butter. Yeah, I suppose so. I'm changing the oil tonight, after I stick some engine flush in the car - I don't want water in there! I'll go hit up clubgp.com for more specifics on the intake gasket stuff. Thanks a bunch!

It's not so bad after you've done it 5 or 6 times. I could practically do it with my eyes closed now. :doh:

Dang. Did you have to mess with the timing belts at all, too? (all what - three of them? :eek: )

The timing belt is actually one of the more trivial things. I replace it every 60,000 miles just so I don't have to mess with it.

Sweet. I take it you're pretty obsessive-compulsive about the maintenance on the 3.4? I trust it pays off with blistering performance...

Blistering performance? No.... Longetivity? Yes

A replacement engine going into the wife's car. As much as I would've liked to have swapped a 3800 into it, that wouldn't have been easy or cheap. Another 3100 instead. So, she's got the GTA while I use the TTA as a daily driver until she gets the car back.

Flushing the engine yesterday (a waste of time, considering the engien is going to the junkyard, but anyway...) revealed that the oil was mixed witha lot of water, and after all the oil had came out, I saw coolant coming out of the oil drain hole. Bad leak! I'm gusessing the water was being burned off by the PCV system, so that's why I wasn't seeing any steam out of the exhaust. After changing the oil and PCV valve for good measure (the old one had a lot of crap in it) I drove it to a shop. Pulling the NEW PCV valve out of the valve cover, a lot of water is all over the underside of the valve and steam is coming out of the hole.

I'm pretty sure - positive, really - that water doesn't do good things to reciprocating parts so I agreed to the mechanics recommending that the whole engine be replaced, not just rebuilt.

Oh, well.

3.8L swap would be failry easy if you had the harness. A 3.4 (non DOHC) swap from a newer GM mill is bolt in for the FWD 3.1, easyer then a fbody since everything is the same.:)

Or perhaps the new 2004 Cadillac super GM V6 motor 250 HP (you can see in ebay).

Denis V.