cracked head or blown head gasket?

[dieseldude]

Good Evening,

A while back I rebuilt a 2 cylinder (Z482) engine for a generator project, well the project has been indefinately grounded for now. In the mean time I would start it from time to time to keep oil on all the moving parts. As I dont have this in any equipment, there is no cooling system attached. Here is the qustion, I keep the block drain open. After a short run of a few minutes I have some oil dripping out of the block water drain how ever it does not drip when not being run.

I was cautioned by another member about the head because of some discoloration notice on the block during disassembly. I did visually inspect but did not maganaflux or dye check it. Is there any way to verify wether the head or the gasket, or possibly the oil passage o-ring, has failed without a teardown?

Thank you.

 

[North Idaho Wolfman]

You could do a pressure check on the water system area to check for leaks.

Oil in the water is not good!
Running it with no water in it is not good also!
Even a min run time can create hot spots and with no water it has no way to move that heat away.
My suggestion would be to fix the oil to water leak, and then set it up so that you can keep antifreeze in it all the time, running or not.

 

[dieseldude]

Just an update:

Its all set up to run a proper cooling system now, fabricated and installed radiator mounts today, turned a few hose adapters to fit bigger hoses to a honda civic radiator, so the next run will be water cooled.

As for the oil leak, found it, and cant believe I missed something so obvious. The valve cover gasket. there was a small trail from under the cover down along the block, under the IP and finally dripping off the drain.

Thanks for your input, I hadn't consider the hot spot issue.