So I recently bought a 2000 4runner with a slight oil leak. No big deal. Recently it's gotten worse. Covers everything underneath the truck (never pools under the truck and never affects my oil levels) today I was checking the fluids and was disgusted by my coolant. It is muddy brown. Fearing the worst i Google it and it may be oil in my coolant because of blown head gasket. So tommorow I'm going to flush my coolant and go from there. What are my options? Is it even a blown head gasket? What are prices like for something like this?

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First thing to do before flushing the coolant is to do a compression check. This will immediately confirm if your head gasket is fine.

Alright anything else I should do or look for to confirm or deny gasket. Short of mechanic at yota dealer.

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Chocolate milk color would be oil in the coolant. Might also be the 'pink milkshake' where coolant and transmission fluid mix.

Dark brown but clear-ish could be (very) old Toyota Red coolant.

-Charlie

I'll mention this since you just signed up OP and maybe haven't heard.

Be aware that it is not a good thing to mix toyota red coolant with generic green. If you think it currently has red, then stick with it or do a very thorough flush in between colors.

Where did you check the coolant? Overflow tanks often look neglected, does it look very bad in the rad also?

They call it pink milkshake because it's Toyota red coolant mixing with trans fluid but if by chance you're running the green stuff...well green and red make brown so beware of the the brown milkshake. If the trans line inside the radiator is leaking internally then there would be no puddling on the ground.

Before you condemn the truck, Dr Google might be leading you astray.

If you have no milky appearance to the engine oil, or the tranny oil, and the truck is running OK, you likely have a severely neglected cooling system.

Looks bad in rad and reservoir. I'll do a flush and put all new fluids in.

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Have no clue what the previous owner ran. I'm a dummy and didn't check that fluid when I bought the truck. I'm doing a complete flush with all new fluids. Thinking I'm going to stick with green though

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That would be best case scenario I assume, I plan for the worst hope for the best. I'll take pics of everything and post them up tmmwr.
Btw didn't mean to reply to everyone separately I'm new to the forum and just now figured out how to reply to everyone at once . Appreciate the help guys

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You'll want the pink long-life fluid from Toyota, it plays nicer with the radiator than green does.

Alright guys I took some more photos in the morning. For sure looks like oil in my coolant should I expect my transmission to go out? No smoke btw

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Compression test will tell the story. Sure looks like engine oil in the coolant, although the engine oil doesn't look terrible.

From the pictures I've seen, pink milkshake (transmission cooler issue) would make both coolant and transmission fluid a very bright, milky pink. Hence the name. Your transmission fluid (I'm assuming one of the dipsticks is the trans fluid) actually looks fairly decent. What color is the top of your radiator??


Funny/ironic is that it looks like we bought the same vehicle. (potential) Head gasket and all.

Since you asked about potential cost, I'll share my story. I brought my truck to a local shop, one that does a lot of work for my family. Needed quite a few standard maintenance things - TB/WP, oil, plugs/wires, etc. Also needed some frame repair.

Without the HG I would have been out of there for about $1000-1200. My total bill was just shy of $3100. That includes sending the heads out for machining, which is almost a guarantee to have to do with a HG failure.

It's a big job, but I've been very happy with the truck since getting it on the road almost 2 months ago. Good luck!

Both dipsticks looks OK to me. May be you have a misterious coolant in the radiator.
It looks like you still have the Original radiator. It is high time to replace it with OEM or Denso unit. A bad radiator could lead to pink-milkshake destroying your transmission. So a simple $100 radiator saves you from that.

The motor oil level is too high so you may want to remove some.

Flush the coolant system (keep the heater on and remove the thermostat/housing) with a garden hose and flush the water with few gallons of distilled water. Then add proper coolant and distilled water.

Yeah looks like it for sure :/ btw the top radiator is brown colored so it has 200k miles.

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