Cloudy oil?

Hey @mkemp590 - Thanks for posting. What P-car did you drain this off of?

I honestly don't like the color of that; my gut says that there's moisture getting into your oil.

I just did a quick online search which confirms this: "Motor oil turns milky brown when its been contaminated by water. Most vehicle coolant systems use a blend of water and antifreeze - and if the coolant system is allowed to leach into the engine oil, that tells us that an engine gasket has failed." Sorry if this is potentially bad and costly news.

What would I personally do? I would immediately drain the oil out of the car absolutely as much as you can (jacked up flat)...and refill with the original Mobil 1 plus a new filter...and then start from there. Also save what you have there for a mechanic to check out. New synthetic should not look like that.

Is there any chance you may have overfilled your oil? If so, I think that can blow seals.

Granted, another oil change (even DIY) is more money spent, but you want a baseline to see if there is a much more important problem going on here (like the aforementioned coolant getting into your oil) that could be a much more expensive repair. Meanwhile, your engine is likely not being protected and you don't want to accidentally kill it.

Just my two cents and cheering you on here.

Hey! Thanks for the reply’s! So that’s all the same oil. All from the filter housing. First picture and third picture are in ambient lighting. Second and last are with my bright head lamp pointed at it. It’s a 08 Cayman S. It’s been sitting for about a month and a half and hasn’t been started. I meant to check the oil after the last time I drove it before it got too cold but never got around to it. The last time it was started was just to move it around in my garage last month. I know it’s not good to only run it for a few minutes, so it’s just been sitting on a battery tender until the weather gets nicer. I changed my oil to dt-40 after my last oil change was with Mobil 1 0w40. I didn’t know better at the time and thought I would use the factory recommended oil. On my first oil change on that oil, I saw glitter and small black plastic bits in the filter. No oil burning, no smoking, scoped from sump and no deep scratches from bore scoring. Put in the new oil, and only got to run it for about 300 miles before the weather turned. I was curious and wanted to check the filter and see if anything else showed up in it. Filter looked good, just the odd color of the oil in the light. Also, the oil that came out before this got an analysis and wasn’t contaminated.

I agree with the others here. Milky usually means water/coolant... that last picture is very bad looking indeed. Next step is to send out a sample - if it's coolant, you'll see coolant elements in the sample clear as day, so it will be obvious after the analysis. Fortunately the car is parked still, otherwise I'd say you should call Blackstone (or whoever you want to use) to ask for any rush processing... but I wouldn't drive or run the engine if you can avoid it... that's how bad that sample looks.

As for next steps... you may consider running the engine and seeing if you get any bubbling from the cooling system. I don't even know if you can do that on these cars. Historically, when I've seen this type of situation, you check at the radiator cap to see bubbles there - that can mean the compression from the cylinder is pushing into the cooling system (past the head gasket). At the same time, you can see if there is any contamination there. I don't know if that's possible in these cars... but it's worth a shot to look.

I'd start there. I feel panicked for your sake... I apologize if I'm scaring you!

Looks similar?