Need help diagnosing oil in coolant

Hi, resourceful members on rennlist, I have a new-to-me 2000 996 C2 with the base 3.4 engine. The vehicle has 135k miles and got an IMS bearing from LN a while ago. I took it to a track day and it ran smoothly all day. On the 3 hour drive back, during a fuel stop, I noticed oil being below minimum and that the rear bumper is coated with a noticeable film of oil. Added a quart of oil, but dipstick was still below minimum. I continued driving home and after I park, considerable smoke came out of the engine compartment, and there's dirty fluid (kinda like milky oil to me) dripping on the left side of the engine compartment, the fluid dropped onto the exhaust, which turned it into smoke. The dripping was at an alarming rate, within minutes there's a small puddle. After vehicle cooled down there's no more dripping. I added another quart of oil and that put the oil at middle as indicated by dash computer. Throughout the whole endeavor the oil pressure was normal, no overheating as well. The next morning I had the car towed to a local Porsche indy shop, they took a look and told me there's oil in coolant, but no visible coolant in oil. The drip was from overpressured coolant expansion tank. So it could be either the oil cooler, or the head. However their experience is mostly with air-cooled and don't have too much experience on this. Now here's the problem. If it's the oil cooler then no biggie, but if it's a cracked head I will get the car salvaged. So what should I go from here? Changing the oil cooler is quoted $1100. Should I have the shop do that ? Or is a cracked head far more likely that it's not worth trying(which is what the shop recommends)? Would a leakdown or compression test identify a cracked head? Unfortunately this all happened during a job relocation and I don't have the tools or time to do any work myself : (. Thank you Nick

It's a cracked head....commonly known as the "Y2K Syndrome" . Don't waste $1k doing the oil cooler . It will also NOT show up on a leak-down or compression test. You can only find it by visual inspection of the heads after cams are removed or by pressure tests of the heads on a special pressure test stand.. Prepare yourself for, at a minimum, to do a "top end rebuild" , to get the maximum mileage out of the engine...OR , sell it as a roller and let the new owner decide how they want to repair it....( yes it's worth it to someone to repair it)..

Thanks. If I were back in Atlanta I'll probably pull the head myself and send to Hoffman who is local, but I'm only here for a couple months and hopefully I can find someone to take it on as a project

Assuming it's a cracked head, a replacement head for a 996 is $3500 (complete with valves) from Porsche. Plus $3000 for labor to pull the engine and replace the head and you are back for $6500, BUT you should want to skate by with the minimum expense like that.

I thought if its the left side, there was also a oddball issue with a broken / cracked AOS housing that could cause the external oil flooding and oil in the coolant? (I might be mentally attaching this to the wrong motor.. BMW's have similar issues.. ) I'd first clean the hell out of everything,, then start for a minute and see where the drip is coming from. Its likely the mentioned head crack, but prob worth a half hour to kinda drive the nail in the coffin.. When picking an Indy for a 996, you want one that has 996's in the parking lot, not air cooled.. its a specific set of skills... At least based on my local experience in my area..