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Oil in coolant, help!


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Hi everyone, apologies if this is in the wrong place... 

I've a w reg 1.0l which I serviced the other day. As the coolant light has been coming on intermittently I decided it would be a good idea to drain and refill. 

I removed the bottom hose from the radiator and there was a significant amount of oil in the coolant, since refilling it now appears that there's still a significant amount left in the system as its still brown and sludgy in the resrvoir

As far as I know it's not the head gasket, still runs perfect in start stop traffic and isn't overheating. The engine oil wasn't contaminated either when I drained it. Any idea what could be causing this? I've seen some suggest it could be a faulty radiator, Or just a case of properly flushing the system? 

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Dont think there's an oil cooler on these is there the filter goes straight in the block?

HG can fail in several ways so oil in water doesnt need to be misfiring. Look around edge of HG for oil or water weeping etc. or could be a crack somewhere block or head allowing them to mix.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Update on this...

Coolant has now turned into a very sludgy brown mixture so will need flushing a bit more thoroughly this time, I'm thinking something like holts /similar to help it along

Still no overheating which is a bonus! Might try steel seal and see if it lives up to the hype 

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11 hours ago, jackgraham said:

Update on this...

Coolant has now turned into a very sludgy brown mixture so will need flushing a bit more thoroughly this time, I'm thinking something like holts /similar to help it along

Still no overheating which is a bonus! Might try steel seal and see if it lives up to the hype 

It does work, it's just a nasty way of fixing it. Do it properly though and it does work.

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If oil is getting in the water and not water getting in the oil then the oil is under higher pressure, I doubt any treatment you put in the water will work in this case, but if you can find it cheap enough then a few quid is worth the gamble.

There is oil seal in the head gasket around high pressure feed, that area would be prime suspect. Worth flushing system out and seeing what happens then though, maybe some doofus has put oil in the water by mistake (it happens).

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1 hour ago, Sausage said:

If oil is getting in the water and not water getting in the oil then the oil is under higher pressure, I doubt any treatment you put in the water will work in this case, but if you can find it cheap enough then a few quid is worth the gamble.

There is oil seal in the head gasket around high pressure feed, that area would be prime suspect. Worth flushing system out and seeing what happens then though, maybe some doofus has put oil in the water by mistake (it happens).

Equally, I watched a severely distracted mechanic pour a significant amount of coolant straight into an engine. I try in vain to shout round the door (was watching him through the glass) but it was too late and he then realised what an absolute balls up had occurred. Wonder how they sorted that mess out? It wasn't my car luckily. You'd think however, drain the coolant out the engine obviously, fill up with fresh oil, run at idle up to temperature, two or three revs to get the pressure up(?),  drain again, then completely fresh oil? Would that actually be enough.... My concern would be that good old science never lies and a simple rule of physics is that oil and water do not mix, they separate.......... so how do you know for sure that adding fresh oil is even going to guarantee it extracts all the coolant left in the block? A sticky situation, undoubtedly. Glad I wasn't the young man who made that mistake.

33 minutes ago, mk2 said:

Dishwasher tablet in coolant tank will clean everything nicely. :)

 

Does that actually work? I don't mind the idea of coolant flush but a dishwasher tablet surely has loads of detergent and stuff that won't play nicely?

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I once left off a sump plug while filling with fresh oil... I think that's about as dumb a mistake I've ever made.

Yeah dishwasher tablets work a treak. Add two to a big system (10L). Designed to not attack rubber or cause corrosion to any metal and even de-limescales too. Any oils or contaminanents go into suspension then get dumped when you drain it. Just rinse through with fresh water at least three times before filling with antifreeze again. The anti freeze last years that way and stays lovely and clear. No pinky cloudiness.

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57 minutes ago, mk2 said:

I once left off a sump plug while filling with fresh oil... I think that's about as dumb a mistake I've ever made.

Yeah dishwasher tablets work a treak. Add two to a big system (10L). Designed to not attack rubber or cause corrosion to any metal and even de-limescales too. Any oils or contaminanents go into suspension then get dumped when you drain it. Just rinse through with fresh water at least three times before filling with antifreeze again. The anti freeze last years that way and stays lovely and clear. No pinky cloudiness.

I'll remember that. Very useful

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Update numero 2...

I'm concluding it's the HG as the exhaust is pretty white too, I'd not noticed this before. 

After consulting many YouTube videos I did several normal flushes (drain, fill with water, run up to temp, cool, drain again and repeat) and then did a flush with laundry detergent. The laundry detergent actually worked wonders and pulled several shades of s**t out! As per above comments its designed to work with rubber hoses, aluminium and other metals so can't be too harmful, and wasn't in the system long enough to do any damage. 

Just done another flush with holts flushing solution which has brought out lots of other bits and pieces of corrosion mostly, gonna try the steel seal tomorrow and keep everything crossed. 

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I'd have faith in the steel seal.

But I would also take the spark plug out of each cylinder and run it on three for thirty minutes each, unplug the injector too.

You should also devise a way to increase the water pressure.

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Pulling the head off is a bit too advanced for me and my toolbox 😂 finished my final flushes today (4 times, just to be sure) and haven't seen any more oil come out which is a relief. I'm gonna go with the steel seal still because I'm 90% the head gasket is on its way out, and I'd rather give a £40 bottle a go instead of waiting for it to go boom in a week/months time. Here's hoping the green machine lives on! 

Screenshot_20190615_135434.jpg

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I'll take a £40 punt over buying another lupo!

Just had a pretty hard drive out on a country road for 10 miles with steel seal in and seems to have done the job, exhaust isn't blowing white ish anymore and the coolant looks the same as it did out of the bottle. Held temperature pretty standard the whole drive too which was a relief

Time will tell whether its properly done the job but early results seem positive, thanks for all the contributions! 

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Lol 40 quid ...

It's all the same. Sodium silicate.

Still if it has worked then great news. Have you completed the process yet? I would have turned the heater down to cold before doing it 

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Far too early to tell if it has worked. He didnt wait to see what happened after flushing, so the old catch 22 of was there a problem or did someone put oil in the water by mistake and he's wasted £40?

If it is a leak it could well be quite slow anyway otherwise a cup of oil will be off the dipstick and obviously being lost and would have shown up in routine maintenance.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_silicate#Automotive_repair interesting stuff...

Edited by Sausage
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On 6/16/2019 at 11:25 AM, mk2 said:

Is that what the stuff is? Interesting.

So Mr. Chemist, how does it work? Does it just coat everything or react with oil or CO2...? 

I'm not a Chemist, so I won't claim to fully understand the science behind it. My understanding is that on it's own, cold, it is a stable solution, when mixed with the hydrogen it then reacts with heat + the addition of air to harden. The coolant system is under about what, 5psi of pressure ( @Rich )? So not the highest pressure, but an inevitable amount of liquid usually rushes to the path of least resistance. The the 'gel' begins to react and is subsequently forced out of the hole..... the instant air + intense heat causes it to quickly harden and boom you have your fix.

I am wary about these kind of fixes for two reasons:

- It is only inevitable that some will harden inside the coolant system during performing the initial treatment. You simply can't escape that fact unless you vacuum filled your coolant system. That is ultimately a risk you have to take and well, I think is probably an acceptable evil.
- However..... you've then got to drain the mixed up solution and don't forget, you've already started the reaction now so how the hell do you ensure it doesn't harden even more while draining it? Can you be sure once the reaction has started that when cooled, it still isn't hardening. I'm not a chemist, so I can't answer that.

As a fix, It's not very deterministic because cars have different cooling systems, so you can easily put too much or too little in. 

Ultimately though, there's an element of "well it's a crappy old 1.0E with 104k miles on, why not" going on and I get that. I'd never use it on a GTI, TDI, 3L etc.

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