Doing a tune up on a customers drag car... He had the engine rebuilt 3 weeks ago... So he has 3 weekends of running on the motor... I drained the oil and after most of the oil was out a grey/white thick liquid was coming out of the pan... Any idea what this is? Ive never ran across it before. Not thinking its water since water settles to the bottom and it would have came out first, not last... Assembly lube? He has nitrous on the car, but im not sure if he has used it yet... It also has a fuelie smell to it (just the white portion)... Deposits from race gas? Any ideas?
Yes, oil and water do separate. However, old oil agitated in water does make a sort of "goop". Since this is a fairly new build, that's probably not it, but I wouldn't rule it out completely. I've seen what you describe, come out of a fairly new build, but it was a yellowish tint and ended up being water in the oil. An unwritten rule in high school auto shop, was that anything other than oil, in your oil, was usually NOT a good thing.
Did your customer run it at the track for three weekends and not change the oil on a fresh engine? Drag cars need an oil change more often due to not getting up to temp. Lots of condensation being produced short tripping it down the track and then shutting it down. And on a fresh build I would have done it after the first day.
Its oil mixed with water - it can happen in one run - there is a leak somewhere and its not going to get any better till someone pulls it apart - finds the source and cures the ailment. This one aint guna be fixed by mixing in a dollop of gloop out of a bottle. The only time I ever saw the grey/white mixture and the engine survived was some early 70's 4 cylinder engines that used to gunk up the rockers with that stuff cause they never ran long enough to get warm and get rid of the condensation in the engine. White/grey oil in the sump = TROUBLE!
Gas or Alky? If Alky don't worry to much about it but he needs to change the oil after every weekend. You run a lot more methanol during a pass compared to gas and it will be slobbering a bit at idle so some of that fuel gets passed the rings and mixes with the oil, add in the fact that alky motors run a lot cooler so there's quite a bit more condensation collecting in the bottom end. This results in much faster milking of the oil hence the need for more frequent changes.
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