As the title says, devastated.

Gone to check my oil before a long journey and just top it off, bam. Propper milky cap. Fuuuuuuuu#£&

Well I had no choice about 150 miles from home I thought il clean it up and drive, at least gives me an idea of how bad the problem is.

Photo 1 is moment of discovery

Photo 2 is having cleaned it up then driven 150 miles

To me luckily it doesn't look too bad, it's a bit of milk, clearly I caught it early enough

Dipstick is normal looking oil, I don't appear to be losing coolant although I've not exactly been checking it as religiously as I do the oil, no white exhaust smoke other than the normal cold start stuff. Engine is on 115k miles. And temp throughout the long journey was completely normal. 1.9TDI engine code BSW, early 2007 model

I'm clutching onto a tiny piece of hope here that itl be something else. I did do the tandem pump last year, after changing the gasket I determined the leak was in the pump itself or the gasket I brought was crap as it carried on leaking. Although obviously it is plausible to also just be a leaky head on the outside, I find that unlikely. I can recall coolant lines run through the tandem pump but I don't recall if oil does too. I'm wondering is it plausible it is mixing here

Is there anything else I should check before getting one of those coolant checking kits?

Also anyone know someone around Nottingham who's a dab hand with changing the head gaskets on these, my regular mechanic is out of action ATM. If the heads got to come apart I assume it's worth doing the glow plugs and possibly any power mods I want doing at the same time done, e.g bigger turbo, head bolts, injectors?

Thanks guys, wish my wallet luck!

Edited 18 January18 Jan by Space_Cow

Well the issue is still there

Exhaust gas test came back ok.

I've given it some huge motorway blasts and it just comes back but man. It's soooo slow, if I clean it off you'd think it was problem solved for a couple of days. It is not disappearing but you'd have thought head gasket gets worse in what more than 300 miles. What do yous think??

Other common faults... Anyone?

EGR cooler or oil cooler perhaps. If your not losing much coolant it may be a very small leak in the oil cooler.

Let's hope so, now the question for me. Is it safe to bypass the cooler for a week to check? Using connectors and just bridge the hose excluding the cooler. The leak is that slow id just not know otherwise.

Alternatively if I was to remove to egr and egr cooler what blanking kits work? Seeing as most egr deleted obviously leave the cooler in place afaik. I need to get to the turbo anyway so I think for now I'm monitoring it, once outside temperature starts to see double digits il book some time off work and get the back auxiliaries all off, as I say, turbo needs a check over due to whistling, probably a recondition, egr system needs a good clean anyway, possibly binning!

Oil cooler looks like an easy job right at the front of the engine nothing out the way, il have that knocked out soon id think but mine being the BSW I'm thinking egr as oil cooler design was revised on mine afaik, one of the latest 1.9 pd engines

Edited 28 January28 Jan by Space_Cow

Reckon the oil cooler first as fairly easy to get to. Think to check you can pressurise it with air and put in a bucket of water and look for bubbles. It would be the first choice if your getting coolant into oil apart from the HG. The EGR cooler I think would leak coolant into intake/egr so would probably cause some white smoke and cant see how it would mix with oil unless it was a reasonable amount of coolant. May be wrong.

Hope its the oil cooler

31 minutes ago, Alasdair1 said:

Reckon the oil cooler first as fairly easy to get to. Think to check you can pressurise it with air and put in a bucket of water and look for bubbles. It would be the first choice if your getting coolant into oil apart from the HG. The EGR cooler I think would leak coolant into intake/egr so would probably cause some white smoke and cant see how it would mix with oil unless it was a reasonable amount of coolant. May be wrong.

Hope its the oil cooler

I do get white smoke at start, but im talking just at start which to me is just normal. Its enough smoke to linger in the air and make you a bit dizzy if your walking past the back of the car but for all of 30 seconds after crank then nothing. Ive had smokier cars that have been like that for years. Nothing during driving at all even hard on it and to be fair if it wasnt so cold outside i bet it would barely be a puff.

I agree oil cooler will be done first its easiest thing. To be honest if im taking oil cooler off I may aswell swap it rather than leak test it theyre listed at 30 quid online and then I know its just done. But I do think EGR is more likely as id expect to see oil in the coolant if the oil cooler was gone as its under pressure in that system but I am no expert I just have a few socket sets and a driveway!

If your not getting white smoke I dont think its the EGR cooler. If your engine oil is fine then its not much coolant at all. It could be a very slight leak in the oil cooler or even just condensation. Reckon change oil cooler and monitor it.

15 minutes ago, Alasdair1 said:

If your not getting white smoke I dont think its the EGR cooler. If your engine oil is fine then its not much coolant at all. It could be a very slight leak in the oil cooler or even just condensation. Reckon change oil cooler and monitor it.

You would also think that an exhaust gas test could show up positive even with egr cooler which mine did not. It could be either. Honestly though looking at videos online it looks like they're both pretty darn easy jobs so il probably have both off at same time. Tandem pump was last thing I did in engine bay took me maybe half an hour. If there's a clear day can't see why the oil cooler shouldn't also be a half our job, if anything it's easier to get to. EGR a bit longer but usually once I've started something il just be smashing it all day so. They'll both be off. I've never once even looked into the egr on this car so at the very least a clean would be good.

There's no videos from what I can see of people changing just the oil cooler just the whole filter housing. It does look to me like it's possible to take just the bottom cooler section off without filter housing looking at the complete part online, we'll see about engine room when I'm doing it. Sometimes I like to make things hard on myself by taking "the easy route" haha!

I have a couple of cars with the BXE 1.9tdi pd and the egr cooler is right at back of engine. You can see it but looks like a nightmare to get to. Think on mine its exhaust/turbo etc off first and access from underneath. Have heard of large garage bills to replace them. So far mine are ok apart from a plastic valve thats sticking. Hope its one of them thats causing problems.

Alasdair

3 hours ago, Alasdair1 said:

I have a couple of cars with the BXE 1.9tdi pd and the egr cooler is right at back of engine. You can see it but looks like a nightmare to get to. Think on mine its exhaust/turbo etc off first and access from underneath. Have heard of large garage bills to replace them. So far mine are ok apart from a plastic valve thats sticking. Hope its one of them thats causing problems.

Alasdair

I'm bsw and for sure the egr and egr cooler comes off before the turbo and exhaust manifold afaik all 1.9TDI are like that.

On every design I've seen the egr cooler bolts to the exhaust manifold. That's what the three bolt holes are for on any 1.9tdi exhaust manifold online. I think it's one of those that looks harder than it is.

Once the intake and egr are out the way it's a case of three bolts on the back of the egr cooler to take it off the manifold and I think 3 bolts on egr itself aswell as 2 bolts for egr connection pipe

afaik there is only 8 bolts once you've got the intake and various intake pipe work off.

That said, snapping bolts could be a PITA. I've done worse TBF though

Edited 29 January29 Jan by Space_Cow

Both my 1.9tdi are in an octavia and a Seat altea. Both look like theres not enough space to work on them from engine compartment plus as they are both fairly old I reckon snaping bolts may be very possible.

Alasdair

15 minutes ago, Alasdair1 said:

Both my 1.9tdi are in an octavia and a Seat altea. Both look like theres not enough space to work on them from engine compartment plus as they are both fairly old I reckon snaping bolts may be very possible.

Alasdair

Awww man if it's hard on an Octavia I have no chance haha

For anyone wondering I have ordered the necessary parts to remove my EGR cooler and replace the oil cooler. I've got a week off at the start of march to fit a bunch of parts I've been meaning to do, the car is booked in for remap at the end of that week so either the problem gets resolved happy days.

Or the car meets a firey death on a Dyno. I'm still putting daily miles on the car it's still about the same. Just very very slow coolant loss. I've lost maybe 1mm of depth on the coolant tank for every 150 miles. This just can't be head at this point I've gone too far for issues not to have gotten worse or overheated.

Il try and update the thread and see what component was faulty in the end

Cant say which is was but having the egr cooler and the oil cooler off sorted it.

I changed both at the same time as it was convenient for me so unfortunately im not entirely sure which it was.