oil in my coolant......

I have a 1998 Windstar 3.8L with 165,000 km on it. I recently had a misfire and had to have the intake taken off and cleaned out due to some clogged up ports.

Anyway, the van runs perfect, runs at the correct temperature, no smoke from the tail pipe....

The oil is fine, due for a change now, but it's not milky at all.

Checked the coolant today and the resovoir was a little low, so I toppen it up with some premixed coolant. Noticed that there appeared to be some oil in the resovoir, so I pulled the rad cap. It looked like the rad was full of oil!

There are no oil or coolant leaks in my van that I know of, since there is never even a drop of anything on the ground in my driveway.

Thoughts?

What should I do for a first step? Have my rad flushed? I need an oil change anyway, so maybe I'll do both at the same time.

I'm not a mechanic, but could taking off the intake have caused the oil to get into the cooling system, or is that off base???

Any help appreciated. (I really hope it's not a head gasket.....$$$$)

If the intake manifold "lower" was removed, there is a good chance for creating a leak-over between the oil and coolant.

If only the intake "upper" was removed, there is almost no chance that caused the problem.

Thanks. Anyway to know if the lower would have been pulled? As I said, the mechanic had to pull it all apart to clean out the egr ports, which were majorly gummed up and causing misfires.

OK, spoke to the mech. They didn't pull the lower intake, just the upper.

Says it might be hard to find to source of the leakage, and the coolant getting into the oil is easier to find.

Says even if we take it down to the head to see if we can find the problem, we still might not....then be faced with the decision as to whether to put it back together or not.

I still owe money on this stupid van.

Can anyone add any insight into what the mechanic said?

Have you ever put any sealer in the cooling system, I had the same problem with what I thought was oil in coolant. Someone here informed me that the brown "rabbit pellet" type sealer breaks down to look like oil.

I did a flush and fill and it has not returned in the last 5000 miles.