oops...mayonaise....

[gvy]

Not my lucky weekend.

I just repaired the clutch slave cilinder and the car is running great.

When I arrived home saturday, I noticed the temperature was rising more than usual, so I took a look in the garage and I could hear water boiling. After a while, I opened the water reservoir, to see that it was empty....

(Mind you, I do check waterlevel almost everytime before a drive)

After filling up and running the engine the temperature was rockstable again.

I did a short drive and all seems OK.

 

BUT...

After checking the oil fillercap on the valvecover. horror.... Mayonaise...

Not good. Water has entered the oil.

 

So , yesterday I did some checks :

 

* Engine is running fine and stable, No white smoke, all is normal

* When the engine was warm, I did a compression test.

     cil1 : 165  , cil2 :165,  cil3:  165 , cil4 : 170.

 In my opinion this engine is ok

* Afterwards I controlled the carbs and vacuum with  a 4 collom manometer and I could adjust the vacuum on all 4 cilinders equal. ( cilinder 2 had a bit lower vacuum, but nothing big that could not be adjusted on the carbs)

 

Nevertheless. I have mayonaise on the cap,never had it before, so the engine has to come out, I guess.

 

Any ideas, with the above information, where The oil-waterleak will be ?

With the measurements on my engine , I dont think I'll go for a full revision.

 

Geert

Edited August 11, 2014 by gvy

[johnpwalsh]

Have you done a pressure test on the cooling system.

[gvy]

No , I did not.

To be honnest , I don't have the measurement tool to to that.

Is it just about putting pressure on the system, and looking where water is leaking? Because I did check for leaks to the outside, while the engine is running and I could see none.

With my compressor I can put some pressure on the system and have a good look below the car. I will do that first.

 

Further when I filled up the reservoir, I filled it to the top (something I normally don't do) and ones the engine came to temperature,the excess was forced out via the pressure cap of the reservoir, as it should. The level became halfway the reservoir after things cooled (as it should?)

 

Geert

Edited August 11, 2014 by gvy

[molemot]

How much mayo have you got? If it's only a trace, I think I would ignore it and see what develops - if anything. Great gobbets of the stuff would be different..... A pressure test would be a good idea, also one of those chemical tests that looks for products of combustion in the coolant..... one of these.....

 

http://www.blockchek.com/

 

I have one and it's pretty good....

[gvy]

Good Idea,

 

 I search on the internet, where I can buy one. It may give valuable information.

 

I dont know, but may be, when I put pressure on the coolant system,( none running engine) I should hear a bubbling noice when opening the oil filler cap , if there is an internal leak to the oil system?

 

I can try that this evening.

Edited August 11, 2014 by gvy

[Wilf]

Is it just on the cap or does it look like someone has mashed a Mars bar on your camshaft? Edited to add- beaten to it must read previous posts more carefully!

Mine always gets a bit on the cap if cold conditions and a short journey insufficient to warm it up thoroughly.

[gvy]

Is it just on the cap or does it look like someone has mashed a Mars bar on your camshaft? Edited to add- beaten to it must read previous posts more carefully!

Mine always gets a bit on the cap if cold conditions and a short journey insufficient to warm it up thoroughly.

 Correct, condension can be a cause of a bit mayo

 

I have to be honnest with myself. This is not condension.

It is not cold outside (+20°C) and I never had it before.

The engine overheated for a short period saturday (as I described before) an immediately I had the mayonaise under the oilcap.

No point fooling myself. There must be a leak between water and oil.

I am just curious where it can be, since all cilinder compression figures are very good, no white smoke and engine running OK.

Edited August 11, 2014 by gvy

[gvy]

To put pressure on the coolantsystem with my compressor to test it, how far should I go? Anyone?

 

Geert

[Wilf]

Cap is only rated to low teens psi (sure someone will pop up with the right answer) so that would be the max the system would see.

[marcbria]

Yeah I'm stumped, if your getting good compression then how is water getting into the oil?

 

Why don't you drain the oil and see how bad the mayo is in what comes out of the pan.

[gvy]

I think , I will just do that, but before, I want to put pressure on the cooling system for a while to see if the coolant is dissapearing and at the same time the oil level is going up.

 

It can be a small leak. I suppose no one is advising k&w head gasket repair or similar ?

 

Geert

[DaveyT]

Hi Geert,

I don't want to put you on a major downer, but the only time I've seen anything like this was on a bike...

On replacing the head, the studs were over tightened and caused a hairline crack between water and oil ways.

Pressure of the water at running temp overcame crankcase oil pressure, forcing water into the oil, never the other way round.

I'm sure someone will come up with a more optimistic reason, and I hope they're right, but have you done any servicing or repairs recently that may have had such effect? IMHO such failure is unlikely to happen in normal use...

Dave

[molemot]

You get water every time you burn hydrocarbons....and some of that will get into the oil. If the engine has got overly hot, then the water can be evaporated from the oil...and condense on the inside of the cooler bits of the engine, which could give you a spot of mayonnaise.... If you are regularly losing loads of coolant, then it's getting out somewhere....but any really significant head gasket leak would give you lots of steam from the exhaust; it forms a cloud behind the car....I have had a vehicle blast all the coolant out like a fire hose!!

 

Thinking about the way the coolant and the oil runs through the head; I don't think there's anywhere that the two could meet....the oil goes up under pressure through a small hole with a rubber O ring seal, then goes to the camshaft bearings before running back down into the sump. Water leaking into the cylinders via a duff head gasket is the usual problem...then it gets past the pistons and dribbles into the sump that way. I wouldn't do anything precipitate...run the beast for a few weeks and keep checking the coolant level and build up of mayo - if any - and try some of the tests suggested. I will admit to using a proprietary gloop to seal a head gasket leak....I poured it directly into the water jacket through the heater water outlet hose...lasted a good long while. Fault finally turned out to be a scratch on the lower face of the head, done during somebody else's assembly.... found it the first time I took the head off.

[PhilW]

^{In my experience a blown head gasket is mostly identifiable by the rubber water pipes.  When the car is at normal operating temperature feel how "squidgy" the pipe is.  Then do the same on a water pipe on a good car at normal operating pressure.  If the gasket is gone the pipe will be significantly harder to squash but still a bit soft generally.  If this is the case then 95% gasket has blown}

[Exploded]

Hate to read this m8
There should be some white smoke from the exhaust, at least that's what heppened to my Elise... even when the engine is hot you should see the white smoke, unless there is really no water in the tank of course.

Sad

 

The upside is, you can now put in injection and a V8 LOL

Edited August 11, 2014 by Exploded

[NeilP]

My S3 head gasket went.

When driving hard and then having backed off it would blow a coolant pipe. This happened on 3 or 4 occasions. There was mayo on the rad cap but nothing too alarming.

Took it to esprit cars in Stockport who diagnosed for me - apparently you can smell exhaust gas in the rad, or that's what I was told if I remember correctly.

500 miles of running in and she was as sweet as a nut....

Really hope you don't have the same problem

[molemot]

Sniffing exhaust gas in the coolant is what the Blocktester system does, only a bit more scientifically!

[gvy]

So today , I did a last spirited trip of  30km with the esprit. It drove well, never overheated , pulled nicely, no smoke....

But I just have to face the facts.

The oil is heavely contaminated with coolant.

At the end of the drive,and after cooling down, mayonaise everywhere ( the oillevel stick, the oilfillercap, even in the airfilterbox) .

The coolantlevel was slightly lower, the oil level slightly higher . I measured it before starting .

 

The decision is made. I started draining the oil .

I am going to pull the engine.

 

Oh well, I was planning to do it anyway this winter. I was going to do the belt and  a new stainless steel exhaust manifold must take the place of my old original one because the flange is broken.and repaired provisional.

 

I must admit, I am a bit unsure about opening the engine. I had it out on my bench before. That is not the problem. It's just , I have done all sorts of maintenance on this car and my other oldtimer ( even gearbox repair , carburator revision and installing of injection system on the opel), but I never worked  inside a motor.

 

Maybe it's good to start a topic on this , to ask questions and prevent me from doing things wrong.

I have the workshop manual.

I really hope the head wil not be warped or cracked inside.

 

 

Geert

Edited August 12, 2014 by gvy

[marcbria]

In the air filter box?? How the heck?

[gvy]

Via the crankcase breather hose....

[molemot]

It will be interesting to see what you discover.... have fun!!

[ramjet]

Well at least you have been cautious enough to catch it before things got worse.

 

Best of luck with the work.

[marcbria]

Oh yeah crankcase breather makes sense, must have been really frothy to get all the way up there. 

[gvy]

OK ,

 

A month further.

I took the engine and gearbox out onto my worktable ( under the car )

 

I decided to do a serious headjob.

 

I first cleaned and decarbonised the combustion chamber.

 

The head was flat, but I let a machineshop prepare the surface and put pressure on it, in a 80°C watertank , to check there are non internal microcracks.

None reported, so I can start rebuilding.

I first started cleaning and polishing the valves, Removing all carbon build up and manually grinding them in their seats with grinding paste. all valves and valve seats are in ok condition and so are the valveguides. No backlash.

 

 

 

With a self made tool ( I made it for my other oldie) I reinstalled all valves.

 

 

 

 

I decided to do some portmatching, while the head is on the workbench, so some material is removed. I did the same on the intake manifold of course

 

 

[gvy]

While on the bench I decide to do some other jobs as well.

Change the clutch drivingplate, clutch pressure plate and the release bearing.

I noticed that the old releas bearing had some cracks in the housing and one small clip was missing to connect the release bearing to the release fork.

I also noticed, there was no nytralon washer used at the end of the drive shaft.

 

 

 

 

 

 

And I want to tackle a leak at the gearbox selector shaft that I have ever since the gearbox is revised at Harry Martens 3.5 years ago.

I opened the cover and noticed that the used O-ring around the selectorshaft is not the correct size hence he leak.

I searched a correct O-ring and closed the cover using loctite 5910