I recently bought a used 390fe block, very low miles, autozone remanufacture of a 501 block with a 3u crank, 30 over. I got a great deal on it because the owner said it was oiling the coolant, he thought it could be lack of thread sealer or something with his radiator and the trans lines. Either way, I installed it a couple weeks ago and what do you know, it's oiling the coolant. During the assembly, i used thread sealer over the head bolts, rocker shafts, and intake bolts. The leak isn't so bad, I've gone about 300 miles with it so far and i only had to add almost a quart of
oil the other day. I'm still driving it because it's my only car and it runs very good and very cool. The
oil is super clean, but obviously the coolant is pretty brown and milky, but like i said, it still runs very cool. i know that these FEs can get cracks in the
oil galley and they need to be sleeved, this block already has sleeves in the galley. One of the sleeves is just barely below the deck surface, just enough to notice. Could that be causing a leak? I'm also running a HV oil pump with 10w-40, it gets 80 psi cold starting and runs around 60 when cruising, never drops below 20 at hot idle. Could high psi be forcing a leak somewhere? I've garage rebuilt a couple FEs for this car and I've never had this problem, they were all very used with much lower oil pressure. I'm also using cylinder heads off another FE that had no problems. I'm guessing and hoping that maybe the oil is pushing by the thread sealer and I need to clean the head bolts and use more. Any thoughts about a fix would be much appreciated, thanks everyone.