Wait, so when you say you saw chocolate milk colored oil, where exactly did you see it? I'm confused, because later you state that you didn't pull the valve cover until later and that you saw oil in the coolant reservoir.

Oil in the coolant (while still bad) is much more salvageable than coolant in the oil... For one thing, the oil in the coolant didn't necessarily come from the head gasket. You could just have a busted radiator and trans fluid is migrating into the coolant.

I still think sending your oil off for analysis is the best bet. They can tell you for sure if you have coolant in it, and other useful things as well.


-tp