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Faunsdale, AL | I would take off valve cover and oil pan and pressurize the cooling system. If it’s leaking from up top you should either get some sign of it coming out along where the pushrods and lifters are or under the bottom, you’ll see it coming from somewhere, in cylinder bore around piston skirt, outside of cylinder sleeve like a liner seal or again down from the camshaft or even the timing gear case if it were the water pump. You’re going to do that disassembly anyway, all you have to do is stop and pressurize the cooling system before you take the head off and then you’ll know where the problem is or have a very good idea!
It won’t be as definitive of a test of the oil cooler as if you pressurize it from the oil side, (higher pressure), but it should show you leakage that you can localize to the pressure galleries of the oil system. Coolant might drain from main bearing journals or take off filter and find it in there.
Oil cooler leaks don’t always leak oil into coolant, they almost always do, but think about what happens after engine shuts down……then pressure through an oil cooler leak is from coolant side pushing into oil side at atmospheric pressure. Might just be that the coolant level in the radiator is higher than the leaky oil cooler. Got bitten by that when we found an 855 Cummins with oil pan full of coolant after the Steiger had been parked for a while. After an inframe overhaul to replace “leaking” liner seals or head gasket etc, we started it up and THEN it put oil into the radiator! Cooler core was $75 at that time.
Test before tear down!
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JD 9L coolant in engine oil
