Vauxhall Astra deisel - oil in water tank?! Please help!

[skinbo33]

Hello, I have a problem with my 1.7 tdi astra (deisel, estate)
Last night, got home and after ofter turning off the engine I heard a hissing noise & noticed a water leak, topped it up next morning and noticed the leak stopped after it went under the line.. then done about 20 miles, checked the water and it's basically turned to oil....

is that my head gasket guys? I would like to be sure.

 

[Burnerman]

The cylinder head gasket is certainly a possibility, but so is a leak from the oil cooler (which is usually cooled by water)......either will cause the emulsion you describe.
From your symptoms, I would suspect the head gasket.
Try running the engine with the top off the expansion bottle......if the coolant immediately bubbles over the top, its the head gasket right enough.
John

 

[skinbo33]

Thank you for your reply John, I'm just flushing out the oil from the water tank, and then I will try starting her up and keeping an eye on the water...
I'll report back in a jiffy!

 

[Burnerman]

Yep, drain out what you can, and top the level well up......you may have to wait until the temperature rises though - sometimes they bubble up big time, others not.
John

 

[skinbo33]

45 mins and drove to the shop and back..... no bubbling at all. No oil as of yet either......???

 

[skinbo33]

1 hr 10 mins..... filled with oil again

 

[Burnerman]

Oh great - another puzzler!
If there's no bubbling or discharge from the header tank, maybe the head gasket is ok.
However, the oil has come from somewhere......this oil cooler I'm on about......oil can reach 140 deg, cooling water say 95 so the coolant can be used to cool the oil. As I recall, this Izuzu diesel has a couple of oil cooler designs.
One is a chamber that is directly behind the oil filter, - the other is a bigger finned item that bolts to the side of the engine. As you can imagine if one of these things corrode, oil can mix with the water.....maybe that's what's happened.
It's possible for a well equipped garage to do a 'sniff' test in the expansion bottle. Basically the air above the coolant is bubbled through a chemical which changes colour when products of combustion ( head gasket issues) are present.
For now, keep an eye on things, but I'm afraid the problem won't go away......keep a sharp eye on the coolant level, and similarly on the engine oil level to see that it doesn't rise.
Hope this helps!
John

 

[Burnerman]

Missed your last post.....is the coolant bubbling over, under pressure like fizzy pop?
John

 

[skinbo33]

No bubbling over....
but yes oil is coming from somewhere :/ quite a lot of it by the looks of it..
how much would I be looking at for new head gasket? (If it's that)

 

[skinbo33]

by the way it doesn't go over half on the temperature gauge

 

[Burnerman]

I can only hazard a wild guess at this, bit it's quite an involved job and takes a few hours......a new timing belt would be needed and so on ......it's also a reasonable idea to have the head skimmed (machined flat) in case it has warped. £450??
If it's not bubbling over, maybe it is the oil cooler after all. This thing is easy enough to bypass ( basically you join the two rubber pipes going to it together) but of course there's still a fair bit of residual oil in the system now so improvement will take a while. I'd be looking at the cooler carefully here.
John

 

[skinbo33]

Really not good
have only bought it Monday, it didn't last a week!

 

[Burnerman]

Panic ye not just yet.....it's worth a garage opinion, now that you know what is likely to be the outcome - repairs and claims can only be your decision but you deserve more than one weeks motoring!
John

 

[mfarrow]

Tdi or dti? I would say it's the oil cooler. Definitely the cheaper option.

 

[skinbo33]

Hello again and thank you for your replies..

I would like to check the oil cooler - how do I locate it? And how do I check oil cooler?

It's a dti.