Oh dear, has my head gasket gone?

[Captain_Carisma]

Hi all,

This is my first post, and I have to admit its not the way I'd have liked to have started out!

I purchased my Octy just over a month ago from a private seller; its a 2000 X Plate SLX TDI Estate which appears to have been fairly wel looked after. The only major issues I could find were a small crack in one of the headlight lenses and the last owners dog had had a go at the load cover. Ran nice and smoothly with no obvious performance issues.

Anyway, after about 3 weeks, the Temprature sensor on the dash came on; I checked the header tank, and sure enough, the coolant level was a bit low, so I topped it up. I kept an eye on the coolant level and found I was ahving to top it up every couple of days. Having had a slow leak in my old Vectra I decided to chuck a bottle of Rad Weld through the system, follwoing which everything seemed fine.

I jumped into the car on Monday to head into town and the temperature sensor came on again. When I checked header tank, I was greeted with a oily-water mixture . I checked the rest of the engine bay and couldn't see any other signs of any leaks, the engine hadn't overheated at any point and the performance has been fine.

I've booked it in with my local garage, but they can't look at it until early next week.

Does anyone have any thoguhts or ideas? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

Martin

Edited 5 May, 2010 by Captain_Carisma

[KenONeill]

I have this horrible feeling that you have diagnosed the problem correctly. The normal running temperature for this engine is 90degrees or a little under, so if the gauge is climbing above that regularly...

[martzweb]

sounds like it could be. have you checked the oil filler cap for mayo like white stuff?

[chicken_eyebrow]

Does sound like a H/G to me unfortunately. If you have a compression tester you can check the cylinders to see if the H/G has split between two of them.

[TKW]

What were the conditions when you first got the temperature light? First thing / middle of a drive / hot / cold etc?

[Captain_Carisma]

Thanks for the response so far.

KenONeill: Since I've had it the engine has never overheated, and when running once warmed up the temperature remains constant at roughly 90 (well, straight up on the temp guage anyway).

Martzweb: I did have a quick look at the oil filler cap and there were a few 'mayo' like deposits on the underside.

TKW: The temperature light first appeared just after startup when the engine was cold. Same conditions every time it has appeared since.

chicken_eyebrow: I don't have a compression tester myself; I'll see if I can scrounge one.

[TKW]

In that case, are you sure that the light wasn't caused by the well-known faulty coolant sensor problem, and the gunge the result of whatever **** you put in with the coolant? Hopefully.....

Doesn't explain the slow loss, though :(

Edited 5 May, 2010 by TKW

[rwbaldwin]

It sounds like a head gasket.

One thing to try is to torque up the head bolts.

I've come across at least 10 cars with this engine (AHF) where the head bolts were not torqued up correctly, giving the symptoms of a HG failure.

[vrs180]

If you think the coolant is leaking via the head gasket into the engine oil, then I would advise you try not to use the car as much as possible until the garage can look at it.

Most antifreeze's contain Sodium..... and Sodium transformes engine oil from a lubricant to a grinding paste.

Bill.

[fordfan]

One thing to check first is any other area of the engine where the coolant and oil can mix. I think that these engines have an oil cooler fitted at the base of the filter. The oil is cooled by passing it through a housing which has the engine coolant flowing through it, anything wrong here could give the symptoms which you describe.

[Captain_Carisma]

Well, after more than a week in the garage and a nearly £700 bill, I've got my Octy back. :S

The head gasket's been replaced, the heads been skimmed, the coolant system's been flushed out and refilled, New Oil Cooler fitted, new Oil & Filter.

Hopefully, she should be OK now. I've only just picked her up, so I haven't given her a proper run yet, but I'll take her for a blast along the motorway later.

[jmf]

700 pounds, ouch! Isn't getting a whole other engine (VRS? :p )from the breakers cheaper?

[Captain_Carisma]

700 pounds, ouch! Isn't getting a whole other engine (VRS? :p )from the breakers cheaper?

You might be right there.

Right, I've driven the car home now (was at work, 35 miles down the motorway), and there's a big issue. When accelerating, you canb hear the Turbo spooling up bu there's now power behind it. The speed will build up, but there's no response behind the throttle.

I'm guessing it may just be a loose pipe somewhere off the turbo, but I'm still not best pleased.

[chicken_eyebrow]

I don't think thats a bad price, when the HG went on my Rover (typical K series!) I was quoted over a grand which effectively wrote the car off.

Sounds like they didn't connect a boost pipe or vacuum hose. But if it was one of the big boost pipes it would throw up an engine light.

[Captain_Carisma]

To add a little more info, I drove the car the 3 miles or so down the road to my Mum & Dad's place last night.

At onw point when attempting to accelerate up hill, it sounded like the Turbo would almost kick-in for a second before dropping out again and then whistling with no power. The car would kick out clouds of black smoke whilst the Turbo was trying to kick in. The car then went back to all out whistling with no power or throttle response, although I didn't see anymore clouds of smoke . Could this possibly be the MAF Sensor? Or is it more likely that there's a loose or damage pipe somewhere?

[chicken_eyebrow]

I'm surprised the garage didn't take it for a drive after they did the work and notice something was wrong :S

I would take it back and say somethings not right, get them to fault code scan it. It may be just a vacuum hose has popped off or they haven't reconnected one they removed when they were doing the work. If it's one of the ones in the system controlling the turbo then the turbo won't be spooling up as it should do.

[Captain_Carisma]

I would take it back, but I don't think it would be safe to try and coax the car back to the b*****d's, besides, I hardly trust them to change a light bulb right about now!

[KenONeill]

This sort of thing can happen as a genuine mistake. It happened to me when I had the cambelt replaced, but I'm still planning on getting the car serviced by the same garage next October because they were up front about having made a mistake, and fixed it promptly.

Also, it didn't show up on test, because I'd done about 100 miles post service before it popped! It probably popped whilst you were driving the car. In fact, you maybe even heard a "pop" noise" just before it started, and thought nothing of it.

[Captain_Carisma]

Well, following a good 3 hours poking around and tracing all the vaccum hoses we could find, neither myself or my father can find any loose hoses or connection, no obvious problems or potential trouble spots.

I'm going to try and coax the car back to the garage tomorrow so they can fix the damn thing!

[felicia16v]

sounds like maybe the MAF or some rag that was maybe stuffed down a pipe to keep crap out while it was all apart has been forgotten and is blocking something..

did they change the oilcooler before the headgasket or afterwards? almost 100% it was that if you had no over heating as when they blow the gasket they usually blow the coolant straight out and there are not really many places for the coolant and oil to mix in the gasket itself..

for anyone else thinking they have similar probs the simple thing is to disconnect the oil cooler water pipes and join them up with a hose joiner and run it for a bit to see if oil comes out of the cooler pipes

[Captain_Carisma]

After a somewhat 'interesting' drive I managed to get the Octy back to the garage. After a couple of hours they rang me to say that one of the feed hoses at the back of the turbo had come loose (at the back right at the bottom of the engine). Having re-fitted it, another popped off as soon as they started the engine, so they cleaned up all the unions and re-fitted all the hoses etc. They replaced alot of the spring clips with proper hose clips in the process.

Fingers crossed, she appears to be running ok at the moment, but I'll take it easy for a few days just to be sure.

Thanks for all the suggestions.

Edited 24 May, 2010 by Captain_Carisma

[chicken_eyebrow]

Good to hear they've finally got it sorted!

Those spring clips are rubbish, any clips I've taken off of mine I've replaced with proper jubilee clips