water in the oil???

[Graeme Smith]

I am helping a friend who has been adding coolant on a regular basis, not a lot of coolant, but still needs topping up, we use a catch can setup to handle the coolant top up, ie the std RW surge tank is gone and in its place a standard racing catch can is installed where it can be easily seen. The catch can receives any coolant that is released via the radiator cap, then when all cools down that coolant flows back into the radiator, same idea as most cars. The catch can has a coolant level tube that can be seen so the owner knows it has lost some coolant. When he dips the oil tank no water is seen, the oil is visually as it should be. the only place where we see the creamy oil is in the oil catch can (it is connected to the vent tube on the oil tank and its job is to separate any oil in the fumes coming from the oil tank, it has a dip stick and we see about 2 mm of creamy oil when it is removed for inspection. We have pulled off the barrels and checked for cracks between the sleeves at the base of the barrells, no visible crack is seen, and inside the crankcase shows only oil, no creamy at all. So now I have run out of ideas of where the coolant could be getting into the catch can and only there??
Whilst we have the barrels off we plan to machine of the fire ring protrusion and replace with the solid full face gasket and studs, When looking at the talon engine set up it shows the solid head gasket and a base gasket, so I am wondering how much should be machined of the barrels to allow for these instead of the current no base gasket and the fire ring setup, any ideas??

[Graeme Smith]

These photos are of the bores of the cylinders, should we be concerned I plan to pressurise the water jacket (15psi) and spray soapy water over these marks etc, to see if any are leaking

[Graeme Smith]

[Lyle Swallows]

yikes, a pressure test for sure, that does look likes its been pitted, either from sitting, or from the backside in the water jacket.
let us know the results!

[Graeme Smith]

Update, we have pressurised the water jacket in both cylinders, sprayed soapy water everywhere and have not found any leaks, no crack can be seen and no bubbles between the cylinders.
We cannot see any cream colour anywhere in the crankcase, we can see some cream in a couple of push rod covers and under the pax rocker cover.
Our next testing we will heat up each head and pressure test again as well as the barrels. any other thoughts / suggestions appreciated

[Lyle Swallows]

i think the cream you're finding is typical combustion by product/water vapor in the ambient air condensing and mixing with the oil.

any ICE engine will develop that creamy water vapor in the crank case ventilation system.

now for your missing coolant, if the system isnt able to be sealed and is open to atmosphere then the boiling point will be lower than ideal and isolated boiling will occur in the cylinder heads turning to vapor in the coolant system which could then vent to atmosphere.

do you know the coolant system is getting pressurized and holding?

[Graeme Smith]

We have found the issue, there were no leaks, it was the coolant surge tank we were using, it was too small and when cold we were filling it up to the line we put on the sight tube so when the engine got hot the coolant expanded and filled the surge tank and then as more entered it the overflow worked and let it out to atmosphere, so next time it was checked the coolant had cooled and flowed back into the radiator and the level now showed below the line we put on the sight tube. we only had a 1 ltr surge tank where as the stock RW surge tank holds 3 ltrs, and when it is check via the dip the finger there is 2 ltrs in it.

We are however going to take this opportunity to replace the fire rings with the later solid head gasket and the base gasket as well, we will machine off the fire ring face.

[Graeme Smith]

Turns out we cannot simply change the fire rings to the solid head gasket, nor add the base gasket as unknown to me RW changed the way the liners were installed, ie, in our 2006 162F the liners are pushed in from above, with a flange on top of the liner that holds the fire rings, the later upgrade the liners were pushed in from the bottom and the bottom has the sealing lip so we will keep with the standard layout as we didn't actually have a leak,  

[Lyle Swallows]

i'm here with the old style water jackets and liners aswell...

what seems to be the issue that they needed to change the water jackets and liners? just the water jackets cracking? so as long as theyre not cracked yet they are still ok to run?

[Graeme Smith]

Not the liners it was the aluminium between the liners it sometimes cracks across that narrow bridge, also the O ring that is at the bottom of the barrels needs to seal against the liners, and the top of the case and that requires it to compress and fill the machined groove, so the groove is machined square and the O ring is round so the squish of the O ring does not fill the square machining so silicon is added and that amount of silicon is critical not enough and the gaps will not seal, too much and it will also squish out and the brand and quality of the silicon is extremely important, get either of those wrong and it probably will leak.