So a senior family member mistakenly put a whole gallon of Dex-cool 50/50 in the oil fill of an 07 Chevy 3.5 FWD car and drove it about 20-25 miles:roll_eyes:
. There is a coolant leak and I trying to find that last night when I noticed zero coolant in the reservoir and determined this massive mistake had been made. First thought was oh #$@! this motor is toast, but I was told the car wasn’t making any unusual noises on the drive home, so I bought some cheap oil, filter for flushing purposes along with my preferred brand (castrol), and higher grade oil filter. I dumped the oil with the gallon of a/f in it let it drain until there was only a drip every 15 seconds or so from the plug and filter thread pipe. Cheap oil in with a quart of motor flush and cheap filter on (filled filter with oil first) goes in and, I let the car run for maybe a minute just enough to circulate the oil maybe 90 seconds tops. I dumped it and now it’s more of an OJ look and I realize it’s going to take multiple changes, so late night trip to wally world. To shorten a long story I did 4 more change/dumps running the car a little longer each time until I got up to near operating temp on the final one to be dumped. The last time I saw the faintest hint of whitesh about a thread size in the stream for a few seconds, but overall the oil seemed very clear and what came out of the filter was just oil. I filled up with the earlier mentioned castrol(this is the 6th batch of oil and filter post a/f infusion) and put the k/n on and drove it a couple miles. The car had no unusual sounds, knocks, clangs, shutters or otherwise. I told the person to maybe run it for 1k and change it again. What is everyone’s opinion here? Is there anything else to be done at this point other than hope the babbit in the rod and main bearings was not damaged? I haven’t given the car back to owner yet, so I could still do another step if some has ever come across this and solved the problem (tear down and rebuild while a solution is not the answer I’m looking for
I had an issue with water getting into a Borg warner boat transmission. Folks were telling me the tranny needed to be torn down and cleaned of ALL specs of water. I did some thinking about it. I let it drain over night and did some more thinking. Isopropanol will mix with water and oil. I went to Wally world and purchased a case (12 bottles), put in six bottles and spun the tranny for a few minutes then I let it sit over night and drained it the next morning and repeated the process with the other six bottles. I filled it with regular fluid and ran it for about 15 minutes and drained it. The fluid looked fine. I then refilled it and ran it normally . I put over 1000 hours on it before I sold the boat with no problems.
The common name for isopropanol is rubbing alcohol, you need to get the 91% strength version not the 85%.
ZX
When I was in the construction busness I had several mishaps with employees putting diesl in gas engines and visa versa, hydrolic fluid in fuel tank and fuel in hyd. tanks even had one guy put gas in the radiator of a diesl skid steer. Always worked out and no longlasting problems. Don’t know of the times I was never told what happened! HARD TO FIND GOOD HELP!! Glad I’m retired now!
IMO I think you will be fine. If anything, change the oil on shorter intervals for the next few times. I wouldn’t expect any catastrophic damage from having a gallon of antifreeze added to the crankcase along with oil for that little amount of time.
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Does that car have a magnetic crankcase drain plug? If it does and you didn’t see any metal shards on the drain plug, then the chances are good there wasn’t any bearing damage.
There are places that will test oil, if you still have the oil that was mixed with the antifreeze. That would tell you if there’s any finer metal particles.
Otherwise, all you can really do short of tearing down the engine, is watch & wait.
I’ve seen scored bearings in a few engines that still held up good, and had good oil pressure. They were basically badly scratched. The damage wasn’t even known until the engine had to be rebuilt. When a rod or main bearing fails, it’s often in short order, you know there’s a problem. They may eventually fail with even small damage, or may last as long as the rest of the engine. But, if you see or start to see any metal in the oil, that’s a good indication the damage is more serious.
quote:Yeah I forgot to mention there was no metal present on the magnet during any of times I removed the plug to dump contaminated oil. I definitely took that as a hopeful sign at least. Unfortunately the car only has an oil light and not a gauge so without going through hooking up a test gauge I have no way to know if the pressures are at or near spec. The car only has 87k on it so I'm hoping it can withstand this one time (hopefully) shock to it's system lol.
Originally posted by bigjim5589Does that car have a magnetic crankcase drain plug? If it does and you didn’t see any metal shards on the drain plug, then the chances are good there wasn’t any bearing damage.
There are places that will test oil, if you still have the oil that was mixed with the antifreeze. That would tell you if there’s any finer metal particles.
Otherwise, all you can really do short of tearing down the engine, is watch & wait.
I’ve seen scored bearings in a few engines that still held up good, and had good oil pressure. They were basically badly scratched. The damage wasn’t even known until the engine had to be rebuilt. When a rod or main bearing fails, it’s often in short order, you know there’s a problem. They may eventually fail with even small damage, or may last as long as the rest of the engine. But, if you see or start to see any metal in the oil, that’s a good indication the damage is more serious.
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As long as no bearing damage was done initially sounds like you have gone above and beyond with 6 changes!
I’ve got a lot of experiences like Boatpoor. Have seen some serious damage done, but that was only because it was not caught early like sounds you have.
If you happened to save your first oil filter, you can cut it open and pull out a section of the paper element inside and look for any form of glitter. If none carry on happily. If glitter use a magnet to confirm ferrous or not. It’s not uncommon to see a few specs of aluminum.
I hope it didn’t harm the cat or sensors
quote:
Originally posted by natureboyI hope it didn’t harm the cat or sensors
Not much chance. Only way the cats or 02 sensors would have been harmed is if engine had excessive blow by and started smoking. It would have wiped a bearing before wearing down rings and cyl wall. Water/antifreeze mixture wouldn’t hurt any sensors that oil would touch… Temp/pressure/low oil… if equipped. 