Anybody with experience using an engine oil additive for sealing slight leaks (eg Redex Stop Oil Leak)?
My 1996 Golf 2litre (2E) engine has a small seepage of oil from a small area of the head gasket on the left side of the engine. It's very slight - more an annoyance than anything else, but I don't want it to become worse.
Will such an additive work? Are there any drawbacks? Any thoughts welcome...
-Roy- (Surrey, England)
Sure it's the head gasket - if it is, then I'd have it replaced rather than use a snake-oil to 'cure' it.
It's more likely to be the rocker gasket, though, which is cheap and easy to replace.
That stuff's supposed to rejuvenate oil seals-make them more pliable on bits such as crankshaft and camshaft seals. Head gasket seepage-lots of nasty acids eating away at the aluminium- I'd get it replaced soon. Maybe it's just the cam cover gasket-couple of quid and few minutes work DaveK.
The last one I used quite a while back ended up making ALL the gaskets and seals brittle, resulting in more and worse leaks eventually.
Many thanks for all your replies. Reading all you say, I think my best option is to do nothing: the leak's too trivial (per what Neil Ramsey says). Unless, of course the leak intensifies - then the expense of a gasket change becomes sensible. In my case the most likely explanation for the very slight (virtually immeasurable) amount of oil showing, is one given by dilbert - it's caused by stress redistribution in the form of low temperature creep of the head gasket material. Oil appears along the head-block gasket only when the engine is cold, not once it's running warmed-up. Also I tend to believe the majority verdict: that such an additive could do more harm than good...as I suspected! Thanks again.
-Roy- (Surrey, England)
In message , Roy Hammond writes
Its a well known problem on the Golf/Polo engine going back 20 years although I didn't realise such late models suffered from it. The Haynes manual used to recommend that you put some RTV on the left front corner of the head gasket when you fitted a new one.
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