Oil in the coolant?

[Strelok]

So I opened my coolant tank today and this is what I found:



Of course, I immediately thought head gasket, especially considering my temp gauge is broken...

But, I have NO other head gasket symptoms. There's no smoke coming out of the exhaust, no loss of power, no milky engine oil, and the car runs like a champ. What the hell is going on?

The car did overheat once about two months ago, during its emissions test. But I refilled the coolant and it continued running perfectly.

[lennon]

i cant tell from that picture if there is oil in the coolant. you can probably judge if there is oil in there or not. if there is, you either put it there, or you have a cracked head or bad head gasket.

[Wh33lhop]

You really can't very well tell the color of the coolant from that picture, but there are two ways you can test for a BHG:

1: compression test
2: there are tests you can buy, IIRC there's a little capsule of liquid or something you can put in your coolant reservoir somehow that will change colors in the event of exhaust gases in your coolant system.

But keep in mind, if you've got oil in your coolant... well you've most likely got a blown head gasket.

[jlevie]

If the car is an automatic, oil in the coolant could be from a leaking transmission intercooler. Otherwise, you have a leaking head gasket.

[SpecM]

it looks like oil, but remember that it could be most any petroluim product that has been cooked at 100* for a few weeks

^ like a ATF like Jim said, or broken down anti-freeze, or ground down bits of silicone, or degreaser... or a head gasket...

[Strelok]

I'm going to do a flush and see where that gets me. It doesn't look like oil. And there's no coolant in my dipstick.

[jlevie]

No coolant in the oil, no white smoke from the exhaust, and no loss of power only means that if there is a head gasket leak it isn't from any of the possibilities that produce those symptoms. You can have a leak between a high pressure oil gallery and a coolant gallery that does nothing other than leak oil into the coolant.

[JJ1]

looks like it could be old dirty coolant.

+1 for the flush

[QUKBMER]

+2 on coolant flush first,But i have had this happen to me 2 times and each time was a cracked head. :( How many miles? Mine has 255k.