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Determining if Water On Bottom of Pan is Rain or Coolant

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Birken Vogt

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I have a unit in my yard that sat all winter and when I went to check it out water came out the dipstick. It was known to be running last year but this is how I found it. I drained about 6 gallons of water off the bottom of the pan. It may have had a slight green tinge but hard to tell. The whole machine is condition unknown. I want to test this water for glycol. Can anybody suggest a lab?
 
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lantraxco

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Six gallons is huge amount, was the engine up on coolant?

If you're not brave enough to taste it (I hate it) just heat a sample up a bit, your nose will tell you.
 
kshansen

kshansen

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Birken Vogt said:
They won't test it, they have the sample right now. I need to find a different lab.
Click to expand...

Are you sure they understand that you only want to know if there is coolant in the sample? Seems strange that they claim one of the standard things they test oil for is coolant in the oil but can't detect coolant in water??? Tell them to mix some of the "water/coolant" with oil and run the test! Maybe they think you want to know if it is good coolant. Where I worked we had a kit from Mobil Oil that would do the test in a couple minutes.
 
stumpjumper83

stumpjumper83

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Y'all be overthinking it... Is the radiator 6 gallons low? If it is, chance is its the culprit. Besides 6 gallons is a lot of water... here is some math. there are 231 cubic inches in 1 gallon of water. 6 (231) = 1386. So you had 1386 cubic inches of water. A 3" stack has 7.07 square inches of area. So 1386 divided by 7.07 equals 196.4 or a bad block.
 
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bigmark234

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If you had anything but oil in the pan it should come off. then you can check for coolant leaks in the system by filling it with straight water and look for leaks.
 
J

Jonas302

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Yep refractometer would tell the tale of course I would have already tasted it:)
 
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Birken Vogt

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Well I got the sample shipped back and put it on the refractometer (thanks for the idea) and it shows about 12.5 % glycol by that test.

The water did have a slight green tinge to it.

I am still not so sure about this because the water is also rusty and oily and smells like bad old oil and diesel fuel. So I am wondering if other constituents could be causing the refractometer indication.

I see there are glycol test strips out there useful for checking for poison dog food and whatnot, I wonder if I should get some of those?
 
kshansen

kshansen

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Birken Vogt said:
Well I got the sample shipped back and put it on the refractometer (thanks for the idea) and it shows about 12.5 % glycol by that test.

The water did have a slight green tinge to it.

I am still not so sure about this because the water is also rusty and oily and smells like bad old oil and diesel fuel. So I am wondering if other constituents could be causing the refractometer indication.

I see there are glycol test strips out there useful for checking for poison dog food and whatnot, I wonder if I should get some of those?
Click to expand...

As water and oil don't mix I'm leaning heavy towards there being coolant in there. Don't recall you mentioning what engine this is or what it is in. How big a job to drop the pan and look for a leak? Also depending on what this is a water pump seal could be the problem. Especially a machine that has sat for a period of time, weep holes get plugged by various insects forcing any leaking coolant to go into engine oil.
 
B

Birken Vogt

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This is an Onan L634, also known as a Cummins A series or Onan DL6. It is rumored this engine is hard to find parts for so I am trying to not throw any bad money into it if it is a junker.

It seems like a stone simple engine. I can't see how there is any communication between the water pump and crankcase.

The water and oil were completely separate because the machine never ran with the mixture in the pan. Apparently the machine was running last year for testing purposes. There is no condensation or emulsion higher up in the engine so I think it never had water in the pan the last time it ran.

The whole engine and generator would have to come out to get the pan off so that is probably not a great possibility at this point.
 
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Plant_mech

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Did you check the cooliant level? Does it have a overflow bottle?
Are ether of these low or below normal levels, eg empty overflow bottle or cores exposed in the radiator?
If it did drain the cooliant into the oil it's going to show in the cooling system. Pressure test it over a 24hour time see if you get water out of the bottom drain hole or pressure drop in the radiator
If it's a open air generator I would check oil fill caps for leaking, damaged crank breathers etc
 
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