coolant getting in the oil with no obvious reason

[stx4.0]

Hey guys,my little 2.3 88 ranger finally spun a bearing last week after several months of knocking(it has over a half million miles) and about 2 minutes after that happened I started getting tons of coolant fogging out from the exhaust system..I thought head gasket at first and got a friends snap on camera and looked in the cylinders and they were clean other than normal carbon..I thought with all that coolant coming out the exhaust one of the cylinders would have a good amount of water in it but none did so then I did a compression check and all 4 cylinders were within 125 to 130 pounds so now I am wondering how I have coolant coming out of the exhaust and the the gasket seems to be fine.It was not overheating or anything like that so no reason for it to have cracked but I will have it checked anyway.I thought it was odd also that it happened almost right after one of the bearings went out,kind of a one,two punch...One more thing the oil pan was also full of coolant,no surprise really but I cant figure out where it came from,if the block was cracked it wouldnt have came out the exhaust system but the head appears to be ok as well.Is there any other place coolant can get into the exhaust system on these 2.3s other than the head?

 

[scotts90ranger]

one possibility is a bad intake manifold gasket, there's coolant near the #2 and 3 runners, or the head gasket failed between the oil drain and a coolant passage. That's about all I can think of

 

[stx4.0]

I found the issue.After pulling the engine and the oil pan the # 4 piston skirt came apart...apparently whoever rebuilt it in the past thought chinese pistons were good enough..they werent!...the rod was still attached inside the piston but it came apart enough to cause the bottom of the cylinder to crack therefore letting in coolant both above the piston and below right into the oil pan.I'll probably sleeve it.

 

[RonD]

That isn't a come issue, that's for sure

Thanks for posting the found problem