Orange coolant with thick layer ferrari 308

Hey everyone,

With warmer days becoming more frequent, I wanted to do a quick check on my coolant level. To my surprise, when unscrewing the cap, the tank was full of a rusty like orange thick gunk (see pictures). Any idea what this could be? More likely rust than oil ?

Thanks

Fred
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Sign of extreme neglect. Has this always been your car?

 

Well I would start with several coolant flushes............followed by several more!!!!

 

It has been my car for a little over a year. The car had some extensive work done (new valves, machined heads, new head gasket, etc...). The specialist who performed this had told me that they had overhauled the cooling system. The car being stored indoors, only driven 1000km since, would bring me to believe he didn't have a look at the coolant I suppose..?

 

Sounds like plain water was used instead of coolant on last overhaul

 

Flush it with clean water. Fill it up, drive it for 30 minutes. Drain it. Fill it up. Drive it, drain it again. Then fill it up with 50/50 proper coolant.

 

That didn't happen in a year.

 

Thanks for the instructions! Indeed, just looks like regular plain water that was used as @flash32 pointed out.

My common sense didn’t make me double check the coolant after a 20.000€ complete engine overhaul at a specialist… You’d think they would have the courtesy to at least let me know about this….

 

I wouldn't call that a specialist!!!! The work you listed would have required draining the old coolant.

 

IF the system is mixed with OAT and IAT glycol, the two are not compatible and could turn into an Orange sludge. As mentioned above, flush it several times and fill with your preferred type of glycol/ distilled water mix.
It's very possible that your car had IAT glycol, the system was partially drained down to carry out the repair work, and then topped up with OAT glycol, or visa versa.

 

makes sense yes, after discussing this with the so called « specialist » who carried out the big engine overhaul, he insists he changed the coolant, and that most probably this is residue from the radiator that made its way back to the tank… although your diagnostic sounds more plausible!

 

Flush the rad as well .
To see if the orange is a rusty rad internals .

 

For a head gasket job where the block is visible, I always drain the block. Failure to do so is ... border on negligence.

 

Very poor work. I've worked on a LOT of engines and can't imagine that much gunk being the result of "residue" from the radiator. IF it is, the radiator must have been almost totally blocked up with rust and I'm not sure even that could produce those results. If I had done an engine overhaul in the shop and the customer brought a car back with the coolant looking like that, I'd have been looking for a job later that day...and wouldn't find one because the shop owner's recommendation to anyone asking would be, DON"T hire that guy!

 

Did you see the heads off in person or images ?

 

Don't forget to drain the block this time.

 

It for sure is not rust. How does rust form in an aluminum motor? I have seen many run pure water and not once seen that outcome.

 

Uh...good point! AL doesn't rust...and neither does copper (rad core)!

It doesn't look like what I've seen from mixed coolants but I haven't seen every possibility so that could be the issue. Either way, very bad mech work.

 

Agreed. The issue is, these « specialists » will never admit any wrongdoing and always play the « you’re not a mechanic, how would you know better than me? » card… The supporting argument always being « I’ve worked on hundreds of Colombo V12s, I know what I’m talking about! »…
Shame that finding a trustworthy person to work on these cars who doesn’t reason in pure $ is hard to find these days…

 

Makes sense, also it’s hard to believe this much rust would have accumulated in the rad, with the rad looking fine and functioning…

What’s the other guess aside from mixed coolants? Doesn’t really look like engine oil no?(please say no ! ) !

 

To clarify, you mean draining both the pipes and the bleeding screw in the wheel well?

 

Fortunately yes! I also saw them go off to the machining guy and come back resurfaced. So that at least, has been done! Still have a hard time imagining someone would just forget to change the coolant… as mentioned by many people here, doesn’t get much more negligent than this.

 

Agreed, more like oil n water residue... IMHO

S

 

I believe the car is a '76 308. Didn't they have cast iron liners? But OAT/IAT mixing sound more pleasurable.

 

I’m no mechanic but oil and water shouldn’t mix like that. You could drain a bit out of the system and oil and water should separate. That would verify/deny oil in Coolant system shouldn’t it?. I agree with the statement in previous post that it looks like incompatible coolant products.

could this be a stop leak product that’s not compatible with aluminum engine blocks?