Please for the love of God let someone know what's going on here
I just finished doing valve cover gaskets, getting new spark plugs, new ignition coils, new radiator, suspension rebuild, I really treated her right. I even turned the crankshaft by hand before trying to start it.
I go to start her up, she'll crank for a moment like she has a low battery, then suddenly start clicking. When I check the battery voltage, it's around 11.5v. I tried again with a battery that was around 12.5, and it cranks longer, but still goes into the clicking thing.
The fuel gauge drops to the minimum whenever I'm cranking, then goes back to a quarter tank. Mind you, that quarter tank is probably half a year old, and it wasn't very high quality gas to begin with.
All the lights flash as you'd expect from a dead battery, but once again, battery isn't dead.
My initial thoughts were either a security lockout, since I plugged the battery in with the key in the ignition, or the crankshaft position sensor, since I had a code for that and I had the replacement lying around but hadn't actually installed it yet.
When I crawled under to double check where the crankshaft position sensor is, because I had an existing code for that, I noticed there was something dripping from the oil pan. I thought "Oh, guess the valve covers weren't the only leak", but to my shock, it was coolant dripping from the oil pan, not oil.
I immediately grabbed a wrench and undid the oil pan bolt, only to find nice, clean oil. Which unfortunately doesn't ease my mind much, since the coolant is also completely clean and fresh looking, so that doesn't exactly sate the part of my brain that worries there's a layer of coolant just sitting on top of the oil in the pan. But why would that literally ever be the case? Every time I've seen oil and coolant separated in the oil pan, the coolant is the bottom layer.
Dipstick is just clean oil, too.
The car hasn't even actually started yet. How could cranking it for a couple minutes tops possibly dump coolant into the oil pan? Why would it be so clean and not milkshaked at all if the motor spun while it was cranking? Is it a cracked block, or is the coolant coming from somewhere else, like the heater core hoses or something, and it's just dripping in the scariest possible place?
This thing was completely fine when I parked it, I parked it over a wheel bearing and decided to give it the full treatment before putting it back in service. What could possibly be causing this problem?
I have my own list of troubleshooting steps I'm gonna go through.
I'm gonna have to bite the bullet and drain all that fresh oil out to see if there's a layer of coolant on top, or, y'know, if coolant settles to the bottom of the pan overnight.
If it's not the absolute disaster my brain won't stop circling around, then I'll install a new crankshaft position sensor and go grab some 91 non-ethanol gas to dilute the stale gas with. Disconnect the battery for a few minutes, make sure the truck is closed and locked up, then reconnect the battery and unlock it with the key to minimize the chance of a security lockout
After that, uhhhhh kind of out of ideas other than "Time to start tearing it apart and looking for anything that might be keeping it from starting".
Yes, I probably should have done those things before posting, but I've been working for like 12 straight hours just to get to the finish line and have a panic attack. I just spent my last like 4 paychecks on this thing and was really relying on it during a move. If it's the worst case scenario, I have absolutely no idea what I'm gonna do. So, if anyone has any ideas other than what's already been listed, reassurance that I'm on the right track, or ESPECIALLY if anyone knows where the hell that coolant could possibly be coming from, please let me know.
Thanks for reading my memoir. Here's some pics of the coolant dripping and the clean oil. Yes, I'm aware the oil pan should be replaced because of the rust, but I mean, c'mon, that's not gonna magically make coolant appear.