Bad headgasket or too much cold driving/short trips

[Roysneon]

Found this under oil filler cap while changing oil today. Looks like coolant-in-oil-milkshake but I do make quite a few short trips and I'm sure that combined with cold weather could also cause condensation which could likely do the same thing. Coolant level is kinda low, but I never really looked at it since I've had the car...

What's r3v's opinion?

[nrubenstein]

Inconclusive.

[Roysneon]

Yeah pic fail. If this doesn't work Ill have to do it at home on my comp. Only have my phone now.

[deploytosave]

looks like a bad headgasket to me bud :(

[Roysneon]

Meh I'm not concerned, it is only an M40. It still runs fine and hopefully if it goes bad I'll have time to swap something else in. I do have 90% of an M50 swap that was destined for another car.

[Adrian_Visser]

I dunno take it for a good long drive and see if you can't evaporate some of it, does it see mostly stop and go, and short trips where it doesn't reach normal op. temp?

I mean M42's tend to run pretty damn cool at the best of times so I wouldn't be surprised by some condensation.

[jlevie]

If the car doesn't see at least 20 minutes of sustained highway speed driving at least three times a week you will see a milky emulsion in the valve cover.

[Sagaris]

I have driven my car 3 times since October. I certainly have a milky milkshake when I pull the dipstick out to check the level. I would change the oil and drive it some more.

[brutus87]

Yea, a little bit milky is fine, the test is to drive it for longer than 40 mins to let it burn the condensation, if its till there, then its a bad gasket. hope its the earlier one for ya.

[Wishno87]

Your probably fine. My M50 did that the first time I drove it after the engine had been sitting for years.

[gearheadE30]

Are you losing coolant?

I bet it's just from not getting driven on long trips. Get it hot and take it on a trip or something, and I bet you'll be fine. Due to some of the intricacies of my setup, I'm running a catch can, and there is almost no oil coming out of the PCV valve....but I have to empty the water out of it all the time. It takes about 4 trips to chicago and back to completely fill this container (somewhere between .5 and 1 qt.) I was amazed at how much condensation gets in there.