water in oil

[willy wagon]

finally got the super major home. maybe shouild have left it where it was. there looks water in the crank. oil is not thin but milky.also the antifreeze was almost st. water. yikes. so do not know what damage it has suffered. may try to startit to see how bad it is. apparently head gasket was changed. sometimes you got to torture your self with these things.

[willy wagon]

so today got the major to run. has a definet miss, not steady but quite often with a quite belch of smoke when it does so. if i drop the pan will i see much as to liner leaks etc? what mite be the to sort out the problem? thanks for any help.

[Aussie Frank]

Hi Willy,

Personally if I were you I would simply flush and change the oil first. If the tractor was sitting for any length of time you may just have a condensation problem. OK the chances are that you may still have a problem, but an oil change is a small price to pay to make sure that there is actually a real problem before you go pulling things apart. The miss may be a little rust on a valve that may settle with some work as well. You have nothing to loose apart from some oil and you could potentially save yourself a lot of pain.

Regards, Frank.

[super6954]

Hi
I think if it was me I would put water in the rad and let it stand and see if it disappears over a couple of minutes or days. I picked up a major and it was leaking from the liner seals and you could not fill the rad quick enough. So why change the oil and then waste it and the filter too . if you are test running it you could drain the water off the oil if you need to so you are not pumping so much water round. the water settles at the bottom or should if left stand just make sure you still have enough oil to run it .

If the water drops when standing then take the oil pan off top it up again and look up under the motor and you should see if the water is coming from outside the sleeve = sealing ring/ Block corrosion or crack between cylinders, Or down the inside of the cylinder= cracked / porous Liner or head/ Head gasket Problem.
you could only find it does it when running so could be the head gasket or leak in a seal or crack that only shows under pressure heat expansion if the tractor has a pressure cap on the rad, or blows water out and runs hot too . What ever happens the motor is gonna need a good flush with that oil that has been pumped round .

I don't know what equipment you have available to you but there are pressure testers and water test kits around to help diagnose problems too.
At the end of the day it could just be condensation in the block and low water level too as said before you could be the lucky one . Does it look like there is oil in the radiator top too. That can indicate head problems past or present as well.
Regards Robert

[Nick]

Good shout robert, I had the same problem with one of my majors. With mine, you could fill the rad up when the engine was cold and the water would stay in the correct place. But when started and driven (only for about five or ten minutes), it very quickly disappeared into the sump. Turned out to be a cracked liner, but they were also very pitted on the oustide caused by i believe implosion. It looked like someone had drilled the side of the liner!!! Thankfully the liner seal grooves in the block were ok so it just had new liners and o ring seals.

[willy wagon]

thanks very much for the info. yes i did change the oil imediatly. put in fresh water. wont freeze this time of year. what was in the rad may have froze something and did cracks? so i will keep playing with it, now that i have more info to go on..the previous owner suspected a leak between the front two cyls. i also question if the proper head gasket was used, it looks awfally thin. anyway thanks once again.

[willy wagon]

ran the major for 20 min. covered rad to heat it up. oil pressure dropped from 30-20 psi. now it looses about half a cup of water when it runs. will let it sit a few days now. compression is over 300, two just under 300 and one just over 200 # it seems to get a lot od oil or unburnt fuel leaking out the exhaust pipe. so i quess it is time to take it down and look for the problems. i believe at least rings and bearings? any ideas? i am sure i will spot something.

[Kim]

Run the engine up to operating temperature, shut it down and retorque the cylinder head to specifications while it's still hot with a good torque wrench. You said the head gasket had been replaced and a head should always be retorqued after initial startup; it may not have been. I 've seen this type of problem disappear many times after this treatment. It costs only a little time.