Posting this is the newbie section because I made a huge newbie mistake.

I have a bunch of coolant in my oil. What's different with this situation is that it is not from a head-gasket issue. I took my throttle body off and (wait for it) accidentally swapped the water and the air-bypass hoses when I put it back on. After much cranking, it finally started but smoked like a bastard.... at which point, I gave up and the truck sat for several days while I took care of other life. During that time, I assume that much of the water leaked down past the rings.

I got it running (after fixing the hoses) and it *really* smoked, and I figured that it would calm down after coming up to temp and the water burned off. It didn't.

Long of the short, how bad is it to drive around like that? Will the water steam up and blow the head-gasket or any of the seals, or will it sneak past the rings and out the exhaust?

Needless to say, I'm not driving it until I dump the oil and install new oil and filter, but I *did* drive it and/or let it idle for about 20 minutes total after I figured out that the hoses were swapped and corrected that issue, while I was waiting/assuming that it would clear up.

I checked the dipstick and it was white frothy above the oil level.

 

water and oil separate, and unfortunately the water goes to the bottom, which is where the oil pump pickup tube is.

i had water in the oil after a failed head gasket replacement on my 22re, and it rusted the cam lobes and rockers, hopefully that didn't happen here... there are pockets in the 22re head that the cam lobes dip into with every rotation, if those are filled with water in a similar manner on your engine, i don't know how it'll all get flushed out?

eventually moisture in the crankcase will evaporate with heat, you'll have to do a flush or two and see what happens.

 

Now if it was plain water not so bad!!

If it was coolant (antifreeze /water mix) the antifreeze will take out the bearing material .

Lets hope you were real lucky !!

If the lower end or even cam start knocking you know why.

 

you might be lucky enough to get away with removing the rocker cover and manually getting as much of the milky oil out of the head recesses as possible (ALL OF IT!!! haha), and then flushing the engine numerous times (oil+filter every time) i cant imagine any rust damage being caused over a week....but when u remove the cover, u will find out.

20 minutes is a fair amount of time for an engine to be running with heavily degraded oil...at the end of the day, theres no reversing wot damage has been done, IF there is any. we all learn from our mistakes, and i guarantee that u will never do something like this agen!. a bit of masking tape and a pen, a paint marker, or even some coloured cable ties go a loooooong way when it comes to marking hoses & locations

 

I flushed it 3 times with new oil and filter each time.
Initially, the oil-filler cap was milkshaked (I cleaned it really well) and when I took off the filter it looked like some sort of CSI sex-scene in there.
I put new oil in (standard cheap Quaker state) and added some GUNK (or similar brand) engine oil additive stuff and I drove around the block a couple times.
I dumped that oil and filter and added fresh (cheap Quaker State again).
Whoops, forgot to put the oil plug back in.
Put plug back in and topped off oil to correct level.
Then I added a 5-minute engine flush and idled that for 5 minutes.
Dumped the oil and filter, added fresh.. (Cheap Quaker State, no extra additives)
You guess it, forgot to put oil plug back in...
Plug in, topped off.
I'll tell you, I've never seen "used" engine oil this clean before. :-)
Normal driving for about 85 miles over a few days.
Dumped that last night, filled with Mobile 1 Extended Performance with Wix XP filter. I've never used Wix before, but it was free (a $9 value!) with the Mobile 1.
Then I spent about 90 minutes and half a roll of paper towels wiping all the engine oil off the bottom of the engine/compartment. The pan has been leaking for quite a while, but you couldn't tell because the valve covers were leaking so much. Last year, I found the valve cover bolts loose. Like, I could tighten them with my fingers. I've re-torqued the 12 (ten?) I could get to and the top end is drying up. While I was under the truck, I re-torqued all of the pan bolts and nuts. The side that was leaking all had loose bolts on it (but not finger loose). I'm hoping that stays dry because I don't feel like dropping the front diff to get the pan out.

Some time soon, I'll be cracking into the giant box of parts and get them swapped. I have all the gaskets to do the valve covers (including the intake manifold) and I have a water pump/timing belt kit from engnbldr off eBay. Oh, and two tubes of Toyota FIPG.