Does this look like stop leak?

[Fairtax4me]

Drained this from a co-workers car today. I took a sample out with a suction bulb before I drained the whole radiator. What came out of the bulb was not so cloudy but had several droplets of what looked and felt like oil floating on top.

But the stuff in the drain pan looks entirely different. There is still some floating droplets, but mostly there appears to be a cloudy sediment that settles somewhat on the bottom.

 

My fear was a bad head gasket leaking oil into the coolant, Or a split transmission cooler in the radiator, until I drained it and saw all this other crud in there.

 

There is no copper or metallic flake in this mixture. The coolant appears to have been either yellow or orange colored to begin with.

[heartless]

yuck.

 

there is a "long life" coolant that is yellow, but yeah, looks like you have something else in there.

[ThosL]

There are so many different stop leak products, just go to Auto Zone, Advance, Pep Boys, etc..  Most have a solid component which are the worst.

[matt167]

Yea that's copper glitter stop leak.

[Fairtax4me]

No there is no glitter in this. I've seen that stuff plenty of times and this isn't it. I thought maybe the little brown tabs, but those aren't oily.

 

I'm kind of thinking this might be some of that stuff that has the black little globs that's supposed to dissolve when it gets hot.

That's one kind that I haven't used, so I'm not sure if that's supposed to be oily or not. This stuff definitely has some kind of oil in it, just not sure at this point if its engine oil or something else.

 

I'm really hoping that it's just either some stop leak, or that someone poured oil in the radiator by mistake.

[1 Lucky Texan]

on the oil idea, maybe drip some on a heated nail and carefully take a small whiff - maybe it will smell like OILY, toasted marshmallows ?

[brentlysubaru]

I've used the pellatized bars leak before and it has an oily look to it in the coolant. It looked similar to that.

[ThosL]

You could run some distilled vinegar through the coolant system to clean it out, better than flush products and cheaper IMO.

[Fairtax4me]

Checked with a friend mechanic and he asked his boss who's a mechanic of 35 years and they agreed, most likely stop leak. So while it is oily, it's probably not engine oil.

 

Flushed it out about 4-5 times with water. Filled it up with fresh green AF and drove it about 70 miles on two test drives and haven't seen any goopy stuff come back yet. A little residue maybe, but not enough that I'm concerned about it. Told her to keep an eye on the oil and coolant levels and watch out for mayo on the dipstick, but I'm thinking its going to be fine.

 

Main reason for this "Oh snap!" moment, she's bell-hent on taking this car on a 3,000 mile road trip starting tomorrow.

I've seen a lot of nasty coolant in my years of wrenching and this stuff is a new first for me. Gonna try to send some off and have it analyzed, but coolant analysis isn't exactly cheap .