I just had my top end on my 03 replaced and since then the coolant tank kept depleting. I filled it a few times before I had realized that there was coolant in my oil. I had a new gasket replaced with new head bolts. Could there be an error in how the hoses were reconnected that would re-route the coolant into the engine. Any advice???? Any recommended shops I can go to in Orange county that would be able to help me without costing me an arm and a leg???

 

Who did the work? May want to take it to them and have them re-do the job. It's possible that it wasn't torqued down correctly. Shops typically warranty their work.

 

If you had it done at a shop, go back to the shop. No hose routing will mix the two. There is an oil cooler which, if broken, can co-mingle the two, but if you just had the work done, it sounds like it wasn't done correctly.

 

Stop driving it and have it towed to the shop that did the work.

If you don't mind me asking what was the reason for the head gasket change originally?

 

Hopefully, it wasn't a cracked head or block instead of a bad head gasket, but one would expect them
to check them for that before replacing the gasket and putting it back together.

 

Definitely take it back to the shop. I had a bad head gasket and did the work myself. If you want to check on your own, you could start with a compression test of the cylinders to see if your compression is holding. After that, maybe take it to a shop for a leak-down test.

Could be a number of reasons, they didn't torque it down, didn't properly clean the mating surfaces, you never know.

The oil cooler could be an issue too, but with the differences in PSI from the oil and the coolant side, oil would pass into the coolant chambers first. From my research and other threads on the site, oil flows into the cooler at around 80-100psi while coolant flows into the cooler at 20 psi. So oil will definitely be pushing into your coolant and eventually make everything look like peanut butter/chocolate milk.

Do you see coolant residue on the dipstick and inside the oil cap?

Worst case scenario could be the block, but you won't know until you start eliminating other ideas.