I’ve had this Ferrari 365GTC/4 at my shop for a while. It first came to me with all sorts of issues. The owner had taken it to a show in Miami in poor running condition, and said it had developed an oil leak. By the time it arrived, I had to tow into the shop. The carburetors were clogged, and the ignition needed some sorting, but there was still this issue with the oil. What was described as an oil leak, was actually a oil getting into the coolant, and coming out of the coolant over flow tank.

The strange thing was even though oil was getting into the coolant, there was no exchange of coolant into the oil. I also tested for exhaust gas in the coolant to confirm the head gasket was containing the pressure from the cylinders and not pressurizing the cooling system.

During these tests, the chocolate milk shake mix of oil and water was still being made. I started to suspect the oil cooler in the radiator had perhaps cracked and was making the intermix, and found plugs to bypass the oil cooler, but that made no difference.

Even though I didn’t suspect the water pump, I needed to check to confirm. There is a chamber in the water pump housing that separates the oil from the coolant, but it was dry and showed no signs of intermix. There was a groove that was cut in the water pump shaft sleeve from the oil seal, but it was still sealing. I ordered a new shaft sleeve to avoid future leaks, but this was still not the problem.

The last resort was to pull the engine to investigate the source of the oil getting into the coolant since I seemed to have exhausted all external sources.

Unfortunately, this engine will have to slowly come apart to inspect all the areas that could potentially show how the oil is getting into the coolant. I hope I will find a “smoking gun” that was the cause, but the only way forward is to dive into the disassembly!