Hi,

Can I ask your expert advice on this. I have a 06 Vrs petrol which was purchased 11 months ago with 50,000 miles. Full service history, no problems.

A week after purchasing the cam belt was replaced and I was advised by the VW expert garage to get the water pump changed at the same time.

A couple of weeks later, a different VW expert garage changed the diverter valve and advised I had a water leak from the water pump.

The car was taken back to the garage who changed the cam belt/water pump and said their was a small drip but this was just overflow. It was cleaned off and they advised all was fine.

The cars doesn't do too many miles and probably run up 2,000 since the change. I regularly check levels and began to notice a change in oil cover under the cap.

It's been about 3 months since I last checked and was shocked to see how much sludge was there.

I'm sure this is due to coolant leaking into the oil and coming from the water pump (suspected of leaking from the date of change).

Could this damage the engine?

Anyone's thoughts?

Cheers,

Edited 13 January, 201313 yr by sandyacreuk

Perfectly normal.

It's common on the petrol vRS, especially ones that only do short journey's.

It's condensation, that otherwise would be burnt off with a nice hot engine. Short journey's where the engine rarely gets a nice long run see's the water mix with the oil and collect at the top off the engine.

Here is another member's oil cap who also does short trips...

i can honestly say i've never had that with mine and we do stupidly short journeys.

Silver1011 - You may have just made my day!. I thought I was going to spend Monday battling it out with the garage and feeling really annoyed.

In the last two months, the car has been used by the Wife for a few local trips. I would say the car does warm up, but isn't given, shall we say " a good long run".

If I took it on a hours Motorway run, would this start to clear?

Would this cause any damage to the engine?

Again, really appreciate your help.

Looks like the normal condensation that occurs in the winter in a car that does short journeys. A nice long run getting the oil and water up to temperature for a while should start to sort it. My diesel engine Octavia does that a bit. Nothing to worry about, just keep and eye on the oil and coolant levels.

Ian

I used to get this on lorries a lot if they had sat, I used to take dip stick out and clean it then put it in and pull out if the oil on stick isn't like that then it would indicate to me that it was just condensation like said above and rest is clean.

Good idea, I'll check the oil on the dipstick.

Again, thanks for all your help guys.

Mark

I get a bit on mine but a good run & its gone,as said it seems to be a normal thing on the tfsi engines,as long as its not using coolant i wouldnt worry to much.

doesn't look that bad tbh, seen mine worse.

go out for a welly and get the engine up to temp for a while. If there's no oil in the expansion tank I think you've nothing to worry about.

I drive 6 miles to work and mine looks like that all the time, took it on its 1st long run down south over Xmas , 240 miles when I got there I checked it and it was clear,

Within a few days of short trips its back again !

Oil on the dipstick totally clean, coolant totally normal and level.

I had an identical car for 4 years previous to this one with 90K and never saw anything like this. Mind you, it got lots of motorway.

Again, thanks for all the replies and re-assurance. Really appreciated.