I have a 97 Camaro with a 3.8 and a 5 speed with 93000 miles on it. Over the last few years I have noticed a little oil in the antifreeze every year but not a lot. I can use a rag and remove it and have flushed the system every year but it seems to come back. At first I was told it was dex cool getting old but since I've replaced it I doubt thats the problem now.
I took it in for a tune up and a clutch and the shop ( Back yard guy) says head gaskets are gone. He said the 2 back plugs are black and smell of fuel and to not drive it anymore. ( I just took it out of storage from the winter)
I drove it home and now its begun to stall out but never over heats. A second opinion never hurts but I thought I would check here first before I bring it to the GM garage.

Thanks.

 

How's the oil? Normally is antifreeze in the oil. But it sounds like a bad head gasket or lower intake gasket.

 

It is not oil in your anti freeze. The dex cool has sludged up the bottom of your radiator even if you pull the rad out and flush you will still get signs of the brown mud for months after. I took 2 full handfulls of the stuff out of my 96's rad and flushed to ten minutes after the water was completely clean and I still see a small amount of the brown goo from time to time in my over flow. The way the 3800 is design the only way oil could get into the rad is if you had a cracked block. There is no oil pressure at the head gasket or in the head. Since your coolant is pressurised most of the time there is no way real amount of oil that is not under pressure can leak into a pressurized area. If there was a passage open between the oil and the coolant your oil would be getting loaded with coolant 100 times faster then the coolant would get oil in it.

With a over head cam design it is possible and fairly common to get oil in the coolant because the oil pressure passes thru the head gasket is, most of the time, at a higher pressure then the coolant.

If the back two plugs are black and smell of fuel they are either not getting enough air (intake is carboned up) or too much fuel. (bad injectors). The spark plug in a engine with a blown head gasket will start to turn a green color (assuming you are using green coolant) and the plugs will look clean because of the constant steam cleaning they get. GM dealer might no be the best place to take a 15 year old car. If you have time go to a show or curise and find some guys that have 90's car and ask who is the best at working on them.

 

Gorn, that sounds like a fairly likely scenario, but I have another one if that's not what he has going on. A blown head gasket, creating a loss in compression, a poor burning cylinder, and a sooty spark plug. Water isn't getting sucked into the cylinder, but exhaust gases (gas & oil) are getting blown into a water jacket. For his sake, I hope it's the sludge issue, but he is now experiencing a poor running engine.

 

Ok lets see some pictures of the coolant if you can.

 

Normally in that case the owner will complain of coolant being pushed out of the over flow. If the cylinder is pushing unburnt gas into the coolant it should be pushing A LOT of air at a ratio of around 14.6 to 1 I still am not seeing where oil would be coming from unless the piston/rings are damaged. That would show up as smoking from the tail pipe before it fouled out the plugs.

He could very well have a blown headgasket but IMO all the syptoms he has talked about are not pointing to a headgasket.

 

The oil would come from the fact that there's always a thin film of oil on the cylinder walls, above and below the rings. Burping out a little burnt oil with the exhaust gases is a natural occurrence, which has nothing to do with damaged rings or pistons. You should know that, all engines have a certain "acceptable" level of oil consumption between changes. On the spark plugs, I mentioned sooty, as in rich/unburned fuel, not oil fouled. It could be a head gasket, with a minuscule leak (his oily residue buildup is a yearly thing after all). Not saying it is, just saying it's not beyond the realm of possibility.

 

Ok I think I found the plug issue,while I was looking over the engine to see how much work it was going to be to rip this thing apart I noticed the back right side of the fuel rail area was wet. I looked a little closer and found fuel dripping from what seems to be a vacuum line. The line starts at the Fuel Pressure Regulator and goes to the intake on the right side.
I will replace the regulator on Friday and see if it makes a difference.
The oil issue looks to be the dex-cool sludge but I'm going by what the mechanic said by saying oil. I've already dabbed it off the top of the coolant but theres never really that much. Once it returns I will post a picture of it.

On another note I now have an oil leak the mechanic said he replaced the rear main while he was replacing the clutch. ugh!