Ouch! "Peanut Butter" is emulsified oil and water. Send some off for analysis.Wait until the engine is cool, take off the rad cap and fill up the rad until you can see coolant. Start the engine and watch for bubbles, not just a few but a continuous stream of them. If you have a lot of bubbles go get a compression test done. Hopefully you just got some water in to the oil through washing or some other little problem like a bad PCV valve..............
Last edited on Sun Jan 29th, 2006 07:37 pm by Codger
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A man is not old until regrets take the place of dreams...John Barrymore
OOOOOh ok....welll then. I cleaned up said peanut butter and went ahead and jsut changed the oil and filter. I didnt save any of it or anything. Oh well.....well see what happens. There arent any bubbles im my coolant though. I guess aome water got done in there...3000 miles from now Ill ahve to see if it comes back LMAO. My engine was ICE cold when I changed the oil.
____________________ Captain Morgan and Dr.Pepper are my homies....
If it comes back or even when you get the the stage to change your oil - let me know. I have an excellent product that will clean out your engine prior to doing your next oil change. YOu don't even need to use Amsoil products if you'd rather not. I have an engine flush that may help clean more of that mess out of your engine.
Do you remember what oil you used last time? Weight specifically? 5w-20 or 5w-30 etc?
____________________ Get in, Sit down, Shut up and HANG ON!
Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr this shit is back....I went to change my valve cover gasket....thats a pain in itself....however comma its back. CHELLY how much is that flush stuff?
looks like either the oilcap or pcv. id replace them and give it some time till the next change. not enough there to call a cracked head or such since its only around the oilcap. just condensation getting in
I woul do as goinloco said but take is a step furster.
Try to find a flat rubber gasket to fit between the oil fill cap and the valve cover.
Replace the PVC jalve and at least check of not replace the PCV hose.
Silly question but are you loosing brake fluid also???? I know this is a "out in left field" question.
You haven't gone out "mudding" or puddle jumping with the car have you?? Get stuck in a puddle recenty? I beleve the answer to these is "no" but I still have to ask.
Before you go pulling the head do a compression test and leake down test, if you get that far. your problem could be as simple as a bad PCV or a cracked PCV hose letting watter in the motor through a/the crack.
Unless I am not seeing something I should in the pictures or misunderstanding your description I dont think you have anything to worry about, at this point anyway.
That 'peanut butter' stuff around the oil cap is the result of condensation. Its moisture and such that mixes with the oil, well sorta, from the splashing and such of the cams and the upper valve train action. It splatters the oil into fine enough droplets that it will accumulate and turn that pale brownish color.
I would first suspect you dont drive very far on a daily basis or you arent driving far enough to get oil up to temperature for a long enough period. These are the typical culprits of that stuff.
The only way you could truly rule out a head gasket issue or coolant ingestion would be with an oil analysis. But that gunk is not always the result of coolant ingestion into the oil. In fact, I just made a very happy customer by catching a coolant leak into his motor (GMC V8). All he does is primarily short trip driving around town and in 9000 miles on the oil there was not a hint of the 'peanut butter' stuff but he does get on the highway from time to time and get things up to temperature for an extended period of time. He had a major ingestion of coolant and the oil analysis caught it before it did any damage.
Now, that said and this might be a good article for the Amsoil section, you have to understand the importance of temperature.
Just because the temperature gauge in the car says the motor is up to temp does not mean the oil necessarily is and even if it were you need to keep it there for some time in order to deal with things like fuel dilution and condensation.
Ive heard of, never witnessed it, people that race bikes and atv's and the like draining their oil and 'cooking' it so to speak. Where they put in a container and heat it up with a stove or something like that to a low temp. like 200* or so for a pre-defined period of time to get rid of fuel in the oil because some of them are tuned rich.
Your car is no different. If you drive, say 5 miles across town, your gauge may show warmed up and steady but your oil is just warmed up enough to cause further condensation. Particularly so if you get warmed up then stop for a while then get warmed up again and stop for a while. This is probably even more prevelant in the colder months than it is in summer though it can occur then as well.
So more than likely you are dealing mearly with condensation build up. If I knew more about your driving habits I could possibly make some recommendations but more than likely you just need to get the car on the highway for an extended time to get the oil up to temp. long enough it can evaporate any moisture and/or fuel in the oil. If you do excessive idling, for like more than 5 minutes I would also recommend that that be reduced as much as possible. You only need a minute or two for the oil to really get flowing anything longer and your just inviting fuel dilution issues. I know people want their car warm when its cold out but if do a lot of short trip driving your just exasperating the issue more by adding fuel dilution to it which thins out your oil in a hurry and if your using a 5W-20 oil you dont have a lot of room to work with.
____________________ My car is a synner! It uses Amsoil Synthetic Lubricants.
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP
It whines a lot, but I like it
You're best bet is to just get it on the highway. I usually recommend about 30 minutes of good, steady, constant, driving for about 30 minutes but that is often more than people want to do. You dont have to do it everyday. Every other day would be nice but once or twice a week might do ya.
You want it to be in proportion to the amount of short trip driving you are doing. If you do a great deal of short trip driving or idling you'll want to get it on the highway more often.
I would suggest a few things to you.
1. You mentioned you were going to start using Amsoil. While this is a very good move in my opinion I would recommend you not use anything more than the XL line. The reason for this is if you are doing that kind of short trip driving and/or idling excessively your going to be putting that oil through its paces, and would utterly destroy most petroleum oils. While I have NO doubt the 25,000 or 35,000 mile oils would work and hold up I think you probably need to service the vehicle a little more frequently because of the short trip driving. You're probably not going to exceed the mileage of the oil so 6 month drain intervals isnt that bad.
2. DEFINATELY use the new EaO line of filters. If you have the 2.0L Zetec you can use the EaO34. If you have the 2.3L I think its the EaO57 or something like that but dont quote me on that. These filters are just a huge improvement in oil filtration. They have an absolute efficiency (98.7%) of 15 microns and a 50% efficiency at 7 microns. You are going to be HARD, HARD pressed to find that kind of filtration available anywhere else. With your short trip driving you need some beefed up filtration. Normally if my customers said they were going to use a regular off-the-shelf filter with the XL oil I wouldnt think much of it unless they have driving conditions like yours. Not because I want to add more items to the sale but because I want them coming back over the long term and if I dont help them or recommend to them what is going to extend the life of their car then I wont see them as a customer very long.
3. Chelly recommended using the Engine Flush and I would most certainly agree. Get a bottle of this and use it BEFORE you switch to Amsoil. There are a couple things I would like to see you do though with that. First, before you pour that in, make sure that motor is warmed up really well from a good drive. The instructions dont say you need to do that, but if the motor and thus the oil are warmed up nicely before you dump it in it makes it a bit more effective. Trust me, I sell a fair amount of this stuff because I paid particular attention to how and when it worked best. Its an excellent product on its own merits, but after a little playing around it seems it has some added effectiveness if the motor and oil are already warmed up when you dump it in.
Next I would change your filter and filter only before you dump in the flush. Obviously its going to be less, ummmm, injury prone if you do this before you go on the drive mentioned above. Just pull the one you got on now and replace it with a cheap paper filter. *Cough* fram *Cough* comes to mind. This does a couple things for you. First it reduces your oil level a bit and increases the concentration of the engine flush. Secondly it gives all the gunk the engine flush cleans out a place to go.
4. Lastly, I know you are tired of reading by now. As suggested, do get an oil analysis done at some poing. Again, this isnt so that you end up buying more stuff, this is so that YOU know how your short trip driving is affecting your motor and whether or not you should adjust your maintenance schedule. Yes, its an added expense but as I mentioned in my previous post that added expense saved one of my customers potentially thousands of dollars. I dont think you are facing that kind of issue but you want to get the most out of your vehicle and oil analysis is a tool that will help you accomplish that. If you do get an oil analysis done and need help with understanding the numbers just let me know I'll be more than glad to help out with that.
At any rate, good luck with it all, hope the info helped out.
____________________ My car is a synner! It uses Amsoil Synthetic Lubricants.
2001 Pontiac Grand Prix GTP
It whines a lot, but I like it
whew for now lol.