yah, i just tightened the bolts so I could buy myself a few days to get the gaskets and get the lift at my dads. I'm gonna try to do it this week while schools still on vacation.

You DO NOT want to drive the car with ANY amount of coolant in the oil. This will trash your crank and rod bearings in a hurry. You really don't want to even run the motor! You will have seriously diminished the life of the engine by driving with coolant in the oil!

I agree 100%. Your best course of action would be to immediately drain the oil and let it sit. If you MUST drive it after that, fill it with fresh oil, drive there, and drain it again.

I put it up on the lift and let it drain for 2 hours. Put fresh oil and filter in it, ran it up to temp and drained it again. Put fresh oil and filter in and am using that until i can get the gaskets. I think I got most of it out, the oil didn't smell/look bad and I didn't see left in the valve cover when I pulled it again.

I hope that it isn't getting in there any too fast then. That is a big No-No to drive a car that has any kind of coolant leak into the oil (even a small one).

maybe I should clarify where the leak is exactly because rereading this it was a little confusing. This is what I can surmise from taking the valve covers off and the location of the coolant puddling up. The leak has only affected the front side of the engine (looking at it, or left hand side if it was a rear wheel drive set up). The coolant is leaking externally from the intake manifold gasket and pooling up to about 2" in the small U shaped valley near the injector. Now the way the engine is the coolant will actually puddle up and sit against the valve cover gaskets. The leak wasn't too noticeable when running, however when you shut off the car and it starts to cool down that is when it starts to puddle up considerablly (contracting of gaskets and aluminum??). Now the rest I am going to infer based on my findings.

With the dexcool pooled up sitting against the valve covers and the angle that I park on every night (it'* very steep and I always pull in) this would leave alot of dexcool pooled up against the valve cover gasket and over time it ate away slowly at the gasket (the gasket was pretty nasty on the top 1/2 when i pulled it apart and there were obvious points where the dexcool had seeped in through it. To confirm this theory I pulled the rear facing valve cover and found that there was NO dexcool in there or any contamination of the oil on that side whatsoever. There were no pools of dexcool in the valley of the heads like on the front side. This is the best theory I can come up based on my findings...any1 else go another 1?

If it was, in fact, just coming in through another gasket, then you should be ok to drive in moderation. You should be VERY careful with any car when it developes a coolant leak simply because it could lead to you replacing the motor in a very short order and that goes for both internal and external leaks. Internal leaks will cause more problems than external ones, but even external ones can cause massive amounts of coolant to be lost and the engine to overheat and cook itself.

A good indicator of how your oil is doing is your dipstick. Check that EVERY time you shut off your car. If that starts to change color even slightly, drian the oil and put in fresh.

If you have an idea of when it is leaking out (after the engine is shut off), then maybe you could put a rag into that valley to soak up whatever coolant leaks out. That would keep it from pooling enough to leak into the valve cover gasket. Just remove the rag before driving anywhere and replace it with a dry one when you stop again.

Once you get everything buttoned back up, it may be a good time to run some engine oil flush through to make sure that there is no more nasties working their way around in your block.

gaskets ordered today, should be in tomorrow at 9a.m. or so they say. I'll try to take pics of the job to post on here. The guy at the dealership said he had only 1 supercharged 3.8 come back with the same problem I had and leaking in the same place. He said on that one they found a cracked manifold, not gasket . Said they have replaced 100'* of the N/A ones tho.

ok i started at 11:30, it'* 1:10 now. Fuel rail is off, supercharger is off. broke a ton of vaccum lines becasue they were so brittle, almost dropped a nut down the injector hole...thank god for magnatised screwdrivers!! Pictures will be posted tonight!

Go Jay Go.