M with milky oil

thdrduck · Jun 18, 2011

A buddy has an M. The head was rebuilt when got it because the old head had a bad crack in it. It still gets water in the oil, not much but still milky. Pulled the head, gasket looks fine, magnafluxed the head and no visible cracks. Could it be the block? Any ideas would be helpful. Thanks

Anonymous-0 · Jun 18, 2011

If the head is good and head gasket was't leaking it would most likely be the block. It can't be a sleeve because M's are dry sleeves.

John M · Jun 18, 2011

How long is he running it? A few minutes isnt enough ot burn the condesation out of the oil, and will make it milky!

Tom Fleming · Jun 18, 2011

I agree with John. Run it up to temp, and then work it for an hour or so. See if the oil is still milky.........

metalmender11 · Jun 18, 2011

a friend of mine had the exact same issue after spending alot of time and money finally took the motor to a machine shop where it was found to have a leaky freeze plug behind the timing cover, replaced and all is fine now

IH fan · Jun 18, 2011

(quoted from post at 11:29:20 06/18/11) A buddy has an M. The head was rebuilt when got it because the old head had a bad crack in it. It still gets water in the oil, not much but still milky. Pulled the head, gasket looks fine, magnafluxed the head and no visible cracks. Could it be the block? Any ideas would be helpful. Thanks

The key phrase here seems to be "... but [b:92d919eed0]still[/b:92d919eed0] milky". I take it he had water in the oil before and how sure are you it was all cleaned out of the engine? I can tell you it takes very little water to make hydraulic oil milky and I assume it's the same for engine oil. We used to get tiny leaks in the heat exchangers on our hydraulic test machines (we had 53 of them in the engineering test lab) and it was almost impossible to get the water out of every nook and kranny in the machine. there were auxillary pumps, dozens of hoses, the reservoir, valves, check valves, etc. that would trap what we thought was minimal amounts of contaminated oil, but sometimes we still had to leave the reservoir open and "cook it out", and that took a while. We could not run high pressure tests with water in the oil, because when it boiled, the tiny bubbles of steam were as damaging as if you threw sand in it.

thdrduck · Jun 18, 2011

Thanks guys for getting back to me so fast. The frost plug sounds very plausible. The engine was run a lot after the head was changed so I'm pretty sure this isn't latent water in the oil, it is leaking somewhere. I know he is looking for someone to pressure test the head to completely rule that out, but I bet this week he is going to be pulling a timing cover off.
Thanks again guys, I'll let you know what we find.

SB in IN · Jun 18, 2011

Leave the tractor together and pressurize the cooling system. Remove the oil pan and see if you can see any water tracks, it may take a while to show. If you are using anti freeze, take an oil sample to a good engine shop and have them test for glycol in the oil.

D Slater · Jun 19, 2011

M blocks after engine serial # 82498 ,late 1944 or later used no coolant plugs in the block. If the M is later than above with a original engine thats not the problem.

M with milky oil

thdrduck

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Anonymous-0

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John M

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Tom Fleming

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metalmender11

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IH fan

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thdrduck

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SB in IN

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D Slater

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